A Designer's Diary

In 1964 an important US-USSR citizen diplomacy initiative took a group of Soviet scientists on a unique journey around the United States. The visitors went to the National Naval Observatory in DC the Harvard (later Smithsonian) Observatory in Boston the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay Wisconsin the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff Arizona Mount Palomar Observatory and Lick Observatory in California. They visited Yellowstone Disneyland and Rockefeller Center. They toured DC monuments listened to music in San Francisco jazz clubs at the Boston Symphony as well as New York's The Bitter End. They shopped amid the holiday rush at Macy's and Sears. Along the journey one group member design engineer Bagrat Ioannisiani captured his thoughts and impressions in notes sketches and photographs. This diary is published to commemorate the 110th anniversary of Bagrat Ioannisiani's birth in Yerevan Armenia in 1911.