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underline [[National Air and Space Museum Spacearium]]

The Smithsonian Institution will open its newest museum, the National Air and Space Museum, to the public on July 4, 1976. In addition to its various exhibit halls, the new museum will contain a planetarium chamber with a dome twenty-one meters in diameter. Mr. Collins, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, and his staff have studied the matter of a planetarium instrument for the past two years and have decided that the Zeiss Model VI projector manufactured in West Oberkochen, Germany, would be the most suitable of all machines to simulate the wonders of space.

In March of this year a request was made to the Federal Republic of Germany to explore the possibility of acquiring this Zeiss projector as a Bicentennial gift to the United States. The letter is quoted in part as follows:

"I can see several mutual benefits from the marriage of our new musuem and your magnificently designed star projector. First, of course, is the fact that the Carl Zeiss Company invented the planetarium projector as we know it today, and therefore the name Zeiss enjoys an historical importance which the Smithsonian would be honored to acknowledge, just as it does Keppler in the field of astronomy.  Further the instrument would be a tangible and highly visible manifestation of German-American friendship. Unlike other Bicentennial proposals