Sputnik Toothpaste?

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We had a chance this summer to visit St. Louis and while we primarily went to see the Gateway Arch, we had a chance to take the kids to some of the other great museums in town.  One of them was the St. Louis Science Center.  In looking at the many exhibits, I had a chance to examine the Flight Gallery portion, which links the two buildings together.  There was an impressive array of historical and space memorabilia to see, including the toothpaste exhibit above.

While my web searching doesn’t reveal too much about the toothpaste itself, we can see that from a cultural standpoint how the launching of Sputnik and the growth of space exploration radically changed our lives in the Fifties and going forward.  The Space race was on and by the end of the Sixties, space travel, Telstar and all of the things we now take for granted were well established facts.

To help you out in examining the culture of the times, I’ve assembled some links below to help get you started!

Happy Brushing!

Links:

Sputnik

NASA (Dryden Historical Portion)

NASA (Mercury)

Telstar

“Sputnik Spotters”

Popular Science, “Bet In The Space Race”

Popular Mechanics, “Race To The Moon”

Popular Science, “The Space Race: Who’s Ahead”