United Press International Photo 1969

This beautifully evocative vintage image, taken at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a United Press International photo, dated November 29, 1969. There's a candid immediacy to the scene depicted; it conveys a familiar sincerity and enthusiasm most of those who were teenagers captivated by model rocketry during the 1960s or 1970s (such as the author of this blog) will immediately remember.

It's fun to rummage visually through the details in this picture to discover items one is familiar with. The most obvious being the rockets, of course, such as the main body, clear payload section, and nose cone of a Centuri Payloader II in the grass, the Estes Astron Camroc camera nose cone in the boy's hand, or the Centuri (or Estes?) Apollo Little Joe II in the cardboard box at right. Next to the boy's left foot is a Centuri 1967 model rocketry products catalog, quite a collector's item today, all these years later.

The press text attached to the rear of the original photo reads as follows:

WAP 1613620

MODEL ROCKETRY

GREENBELT, MD: With the equipment and tools necessary to build a model rocket, a member of the National Association of Rocketry is busy assembling his latest creation. Each year, the NAR sanctions contests throughout the United States in preparation for the National Model Rocket championships, also sanctioned by the NAR. Model rockets are constructed of paper, balsa wood, and breakable plastics and contain no substantial metal parts. The rockets are powered by commercially manufactured propellants of proven reliability and performance.

11/29/69

Classic Model Rocket Catalogues

A selection of classic Centuri model rocketry catalogues, from the company's pinnacle to its demise. Although I duly loved Estes model rockets and purchased a great many of them, I was always slightly more partial to Centuri. Their rocket kits had a certain inexplicable something that appealed to me, as is beautifully illustrated and thus preserved for posterity by the contents of these catalogues.

The truly glorious catalogues were of course the glossy, small-format ones of the 1969 to 1979 period. Although beautifully preserving the typical spirit of the 1960s, the graphic design of the 1969 catalogue (no. 691, 96 pages, top row, left) was still a somewhat one-dimensional affair. The same might be applied to the 1971 catalogue (no. 71 D, 96 pages, top row, third from left), in spite of the magnificent appearance of Centuri's legendary Space Shuttle on the back cover.

Centuri really came into its own with the beautiful 1972 catalogue (no. 721, 72 pages, top row, second from left), featuring stunningly strong colour renderings and photos of the company's models. The 1973 catalogue (no. 73, 76 pages, top row, right) provided more of the same.

The 1979 catalogue (no. 791, 64 pages, bottom row, left) was a less colourful and slightly more formal affair, but it was still bursting with truly extraordinary rockets. The 1980 (no. 801P, 64 pages, bottom row, second from left) and 1981 (no. 811NP, 64 pages, bottom row, third from left) catalogues were somewhat similar and even brought back some of the colour. But the kits offered therein had become far more toy-like and increasingly lacked the realism of real rockets, which, to me, decreased their appeal significantly.

By the time the dreadfully bleak 1982 catalogue (no. 821, a mere 32 pages, bottom row, right) appeared, one could easily foresee the end of Centuri's product line. The catalogue was an utterly unattractive concoction of poor, chaotic design. Only one further Centuri catalogue would appear, in 1983, but the company had sadly long lost not only its independence but also its uniqueness.

Photo taken in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 1, 2016.