“International Week of Science and Innovations” initiated by the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia ended with unique exhibition. Georgian National Museum and Association of Alexander Kartveli, presented an exhibition at Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia dedicated to the greatest aircraft designer Alexander Kartveli.
The exhibition gives possibility to get an insight about life and creative work of Alexander Kartveli (Kartvelishvili /1896-1974/), Georgian immigrant aircraft designer, one of the greatest innovators in the history of American and world aviation.
Sketches and drawings created by Kartveli are exhibited at the exposition, also aircraft mock-ups designed by him, archival material, documents, articles, photos, multimedia projections, etc. The exhibition allows the documentary material on the basis of a glimpse of the professional and personal life and a way of making sense of it by the legendary aircraft.
The exhibition will mark a closure of the “International Week of Science and Innovations” 2015. The exhibition is supported by Tbilisi City Hall. The exhibition will continue until May 1, 2016.
Alexander Kartveli was on September 9, 1896 in Tbilisi. At the age of 20, Alexander with his mother fled the unrest and the pressure of the Soviet era and went into exile with the purpose of making his childhood dream come true and starting developing the aircraft designs. In Paris, while studying at aviation school Georgian’s plane set a world record in speed. Having a good reputation in the Paris aviation circles, in 1920 he made acquaintance of an American entrepreneur Charles Revin and moved to the United States to work for his aviation company.
Alexander Kartveli made a significant change in the field of military aviation and established himself among those figures, whose influence went far beyond their core activities. Highly enthusiastic inventor broke all the previously existed frames. Aircraft A-10 created with his design is still considered the most effective fighter aircraft in American aviation.
Due to the fact that Alexander Kartveli was actively involved in the military work of the United States of America, his life for a long time was classified because of the real dangers of spying, kidnapping and liquidation. Only after the status of “classified” was lifted, when the material about Alexander Kartveli kept in the Smithsonian Institute and in the NASA were made available, the public learned of his most important contribution – in obtaining air superiority by the allied powers during the World War II by.
Underlying design solution of Alexander Kartveli were answering Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and the American aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh era challenges.