Strange public documents, copied here because the originals keep disappearing.
A FOIA release lands on a website run by one person paying for the hosting out of pocket. A corporate design manual survives because a designer kept their copy and scanned it. A 1947 magazine advertisement exists because a library digitised the issue. None of that is anybody's job, and when the hosting lapses the document is gone. It was never secret and nobody withdrew it. It just stopped being anywhere.
Everything here was public when it was collected. Where the rights are unambiguous, the file lives on this domain. Where they are not, you get the description and a pointer to whoever does hold it.
79 documents · 9,486 pages · 419 MB mirrored · 1882 to 2025 · 6 scans · 3 held elsewhere
Start at the beginning, search everything at once, open one at random, or read the newest below.
An 18-page profile of designer Lester Beall and his 1958 Connecticut General style book, described as an early corporate identity standards manual.
Read about it · the PDF · source: patriciabelen.com
Rights belong to someone else. The copy here supports the commentary on this page, and comes down on request.
An 84-page 1955 edition of Victor H. Green's travel guide listing hotels, tourist homes, restaurants and other businesses that served Black travelers in the segregated United States.
Read about it · the PDF · source: upload.wikimedia.org
Public domain, per the file's own licence record on Wikimedia Commons.
Transcript of a July 21, 1989 roundtable in which Tindall, Mueller, Morris, Faget, Gilruth and Kraft discuss how Apollo was managed. NASA Monographs in Aerospace History No. 14, 1999, 52 pages.
Read about it · the PDF · source: ntrs.nasa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
First annual report of a University of Hawaii and Oceanic Institute program to design a floating urban platform, dated August 31, 1972. 50 pages covering systems integration, environmental analysis, scale model research and preliminary engineering.
Read about it · the PDF · source: repository.library.noaa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
Seth Anderson's memoir of flight research at Ames from 1940 to 1970, 173 pages including a long section of photographs of the aircraft.
Read about it · the PDF · source: www.nasa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
A 151-page NASA history of Mars expedition plans from Wernher von Braun's 1952 Mars Project through the Design Reference Mission of the 1990s.
Read about it · the PDF · source: www.nasa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
A 56-page monograph of Milton Thompson's c. 1974 draft on problems met in flight research at Dryden, with the X-15 and HL-10 as the main examples, and a background history of the center by J. D. Hunley.
Read about it · the PDF · source: www.nasa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
Column-format 1882 advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, with her engraved portrait, a list of ailments it claims to cure, prices and the Lynn, Massachusetts address.
Read about it · the scan · source: commons.wikimedia.org
Public domain, per the file's own licence record on Wikimedia Commons.
Full-page 1900 advertisement from the National Phonograph Company for Edison Records and the improved Gem Phonograph at $10.00, with a globe of cylinders, a portrait of Edison and a trademark warning.
Read about it · the scan · source: commons.wikimedia.org
Public domain, per the file's own licence record on Wikimedia Commons.
NASA History Division monograph, 179 pages, on a Dryden flight research program that tested towing as a way to launch rockets, with Tucker's narrative and the program's working documents.
Read about it · the PDF · source: ntrs.nasa.gov
Work of the US federal government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. 105).
