Figures & data
Figure 1. 25,000 people queued to have a chance of seeing the Mercury capsule Friendship 7 at the Science Museum in London. Here the queue on Exhibition Road goes all the way down to Cromwell Road
© The Science Museum, London/Science and Society Picture Library.
Figure 2. The exhibition was simple. The capsule, lying on a trolley, stood in front of a curved panel with photographs. Visitors could climb on a platform to examine the spacecraft
© The Science Museum, London/Science and Society Picture Library.
Figure 3. Reversed gaze. ‘A view of the inside of the capsule will be had from the small window through which Col. Glenn saw four sunsets.’ Visitors gazing at the spacecraft’s illuminated interior
© The Science Museum, London/Science and Society Picture Library.
Figure 4. In the evening of the 14 May 1962, BBC’s current affair program Panorama was broadcast live from the Science Museum. Richard Dimbleby opens the program standing against the spacecraft
© The Science Museum, London/Science and Society Picture Library.
Figure 5. Opening title of the Horizon program, ‘Man in Space’, broadcast on 8 May 1966. The image is taken from the NASA film Friendship 7, and shows astronaut John Glenn strapped in the Mercury spacecraft during take-off
© British Broadcasting Corporation
