The National Air and Space Museum, USA has taken great care to collect and preserve artefacts relating to the history of flight. These objects - culled from famous aviators and astronauts, planes and spacecraft, and popular culture sources such as television and motion pictures - are a testament to the impact that the science of flight has made upon mankind. The artefacts range in size from a message capsule for a carrier pigeon to the space shuttle, and in time from the first photograph of ballooning in America (1857) to a humanitarian food ration dropped over Afghanistan (2001). Each object is accompanied by a succinct description of its place in history, replete with anecdotes.