International Astronautical Congress
From The Space Library
The first International Astronautical Congress took place between September 30th and October 2nd 1950 at the Sorbonne in Paris France. Only the first day was open to the public. The remaining days were taken up by a conference between the attending delegates who came from France, Germany, Britain, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Argentina, and Denmark.
The Premier Congrès International d'Astronautique took place in the Richlieu Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne.
Attendees included Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Valentine Cleaver, Leslie R. Shepherd, John Humphries and Eric Burgess from the BIS; Rudolf Nebel from the German VfR; Eugen Sänger the Austrian who pioneered winged spacecraft and his wife Irene Bredt; Teofilo Tabanera who organized the Argentinean Interplanetary Society in the 1940s; Ferdinand Cap who founded the Austrian Society for Space Research; Heinrich Hermann Koelle, who would go on to head NASA's advanced projects office in the 1960s, Guenter Loeser, and F.K. Jungklaas all of the German Rocket Society (GfW), Alexandre Ananoff founder of the Section Astronautique of the Société Astronomique, Ake Hjertstrand Founder of the Svenska Interplanetariska Sällskapet, Tomás Mur Vilaseca founder of the Agrupacion Astronautica Española, L. Hansen of Denmark, and co-hosting the event were Ananoff, Henri Mineur founder of the Institute d'Astrophysique in Paris and Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion, widow of the famed astronomer Camille Flammarion. The entire event had been arranged by Ananoff and Heinz Gartmann, a pioneer of early rocketry during the war at BMW, who was prohibited from attending the conference when denied a visa to enter France. The only American that was known to attend was Frederick I. Ordway III who was a student attending the Sorbonne.
Provisions were made at the conference to meet the following year in London where the International Astronautical Foundation was officially founded.
In 2014 the 65th annual IAC took place at the Toronto Convention Centre in Canada.
