The National Museum of the United States Air Force began in 1923, not as a tourist attraction, but as an educational tool for Army engineers to study aeronautical engineering techniques from around the world. In the ensuing years, the museum also served as a place to study the application of air power, ballistic missiles and the contributions the Air Force made to the space race. Since 1996, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has used the museum as a place to educate analysts and visitors on the evolution of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Anyone from Air Force intelligence organizations or from the Intelligence Community will find the museum an excellent place to study the role of intelligence in modern military history. The NASIC History Office created a tour of the museum that focused on the intelligence lessons the collection taught. The lessons learned in the study of intelligence history applied better to the complicated ISR mission of the 21st century when taught in such an environment. Today’s intelligence analysts use the museum as a means of understanding the challenges faced by their predecessors and the technical innovation and dedicated analysis it required to overcome them. The NASIC tour follows the museum chronologically, beginning in the Early Years Gallery. The selected examples only represent a small fraction of the possible stories and the verbiage remains under constant scrutiny for accuracy and applicability. The tour script is a living document. Due to time restrictions with traveling through a massive museum, each lesson remains brief, although citations provided in the text enable further research into topics of interest. This first volume covers the years 1783 to 1945. I’m Rob Young, the NASIC historian.