Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory

In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the directorship of the lab and emigrated to the United States.

[2] Based on GALCIT's JATO project at the time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established under a contract with the United States Army in November 1943.

It was the Guggenheims who, along with Caltech president Robert Andrews Millikan,[6] convinced von Kármán to emigrate to the United States and become director of GALCIT.

They used an area of the Arroyo Seco on the western edge of Pasadena, "a stone’s throw from the present-day Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

[11][12] In 1942, Rolf Sabersky was hired to work in mechanical design on the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel under Mark Serrurier and Hap Richards.

In response, Malina and Tsien wrote a report dated 20 November 1943, which was the first document to use the Jet Propulsion Laboratory name.

[13] Von Kármán added a cover memorandum, signing it as "Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory," but as far as Caltech was concerned JPL did not yet formally exist.

The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory building at Caltech in 2017
A plaque at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory commemorating the first GALCIT liquid propellant rocket engine test firing.
Take-off on August 12, 1941 of America's first "rocket-assisted" fixed-wing aircraft, an Ercoupe fitted with a GALCIT developed solid propellant JATO booster.