Project Mercury 'Shake Table' Astronaut Candidate Medical Test Slides

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RR Auction: Space Exploration

By RR Auction

Oct 19, 2023

Set Reminder 2023-10-19 18:00:00 2023-10-19 18:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : RR Auction: Space Exploration https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/rr-auction/rr-auction-space-exploration-13774
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• Lot Description
  Collection of 52 glass slides containing 70mm transparencies from the collection of Dr. Edward Baron Magid, who worked on Project Mercury at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where medical testing on astronaut candidates was conducted. Dr. Magid aided in the development of 'shake table' tests, which subjected candidates to intense vibrations and took measurements of their vital responses. Roughly half of the slides feature images of Dr. Magid, various operators and test subjects, and the machinery involved in the experiments; the others feature charts and graphs of results such as heart rates, subjective tolerance, sensation response, and central frequency response. In overall very good to fine condition, with a few instances of cracked glass (including one shattered slide).
  
  
  
  Accompanied by a detailed letter of provenance from the daughters of Dr. Edward Baron Magid, in part: "Dr. Edward Baron Magid was our father, and he served on the Mercury Project at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio‰Û_All our lives Dad spoke of when he helped create simulation tests for the very first United States astronaut candidates, from which seven were chosen. Dad served on the committee that chose them‰Û_Dad was assigned to the area of vibrations and helped create a test that simulated intense vibrations called the Shake Table. We both remember Dad explaining that before a simulator test could be used on the astronaut candidates, the creators of the test themselves had to be subjects first. So Dad was a subject of the Shake Table. All through our lives we remember Dad having a patch of hair missing from his left arm. He explained to us that they shaved his arm and then placed a needle into it. We think this is when they accessed an artery to measure something in his blood while on the Shake Table‰Û_We remember Dad talking about another test that was on a vertical rail that shot up at high speed and then returned back down. The test was to determine if the candidate could withstand the lift at intense speed that, we assume, would later occur on a rocket ship‰Û_When Dad viewed the movie The Right Stuff with Mom and friends, one of their friends noticed Dad in the historical footage of the film‰Û_The first shot of Dad appears at this time within the film: 1:13:35. It shows him in a lab coat, and he's leaning over a candidate who is being shaken on a chair that's positioned with its back parallel to the ground. The candidate is sitting on the chair with knees pointing toward the ceiling. The chair moves upward then downward rapidly, agitating the strapped-in candidate. (Perhaps this is the Shake Table. Maybe the Shake Table tested the candidates at various positions.) Immediately following at 1:13:40 in the film, Dad is sitting on the Shake Table‰Û_Shortly before he passed away, Dad spoke again of his experiences on the Mercury Project. For the first time, he shared with us what it was like being one of the first to serve in the U.S. space program. He said that when he and his colleagues would ask those above them questions about how to proceed, they were told to figure it out themselves, because they were pioneering uncharted territory."
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