About this collection

Split off from the International Latex Corporation, ILC Dover is a special engineering development and manufacturing company based in Frederica, Delaware best known for making space suits for NASA. ILC Dover outfitted every United States astronaut in the Apollo program, including the twelve that walked on the moon. ILC also designed and manufactured the Space Suit Assembly portion of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), worn by astronauts during performance of extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on Space Shuttle missions and on the International Space Station.

This collection consists of taped interviews conducted during 1994 and 1996 by Douglas N. Lantry, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, of engineers and fabricators who worked on the Apollo spacesuit at ILC. Lantry donated the material serving as the primary sources of his 2010 dissertation, "From the Moon to the Museum: A Material History of Apollo Space Suits" to Hagley.

Image: KSC-69PC-381. Buzz Aldrin during suiting operations prior to the liftoff of Apollo 11. Photo courtesy of NASA.