Mercury
The Original Seven pose with a capsule (NASA)
    The Mercury spacecraft was built by McDonnell Douglas of St. Louis, Missouri. Its shape has been described as that of a bell, a ketchup bottle, or a television tube. All three are somewhat accurate.
    When on the launch pad, the Mercury spacecraft consisted of three separable components: the retropack, the crew cabin (the bell, ketchup bottle, or television tube), and the Escape Tower.
    The most important part of this stack was the crew cabin. It consisted of a truncated cone below a cylindrical section. At the base of the cone was the heatshield, made of a special ablative ceramic material. The heatshield protected the capsule from the searing heat of reentry. There were also corrugations on the side of the cone that would aid in dissipating reentry heat.
    The astronaut would lie facing forward, with his back to the heatshield. In front of him would be a control panel, decked out with an array of buttons, toggle switches, and red lights. There would also be an instrument panel, with a variety of displays indicating the current situation.
    The astronaut would be held in place by a variety of straps in a contour couch specially tailored to him. Throughout the entire course of the flight, he would remain in a silver pressure suit, although it would be deflated most of the time. It the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, the astronaut would need simply to shut and seal his faceplate, and turn on the suit flow valve.
    All seven of the astronauts participated in the design of the Mercury spacecraft. For that reason, many features of the spacecraft were changed to better suit the astronauts that would be flying them. For example, it had originally been proposed that the the Mercury spacecraft would be completely automatic, with the astronaut there just for the ride. What good, then, would using highly-qualified test pilots be if they didn't do any actual piloting?  Why not send a poet or a politician up, then?
    So, the Mercury capsule came to be piloted by the astronaut inside. This made the Mercury capsule the Mercury spacecraft, a truly flyable machine. Astronauts hated the term capsule, and insisted that their machine be called a spacecraft. After all, capsules were filled with medicine and swallowed, but not the Mercury spacecraft.  
    NASA launched the capsules with two seperate launch vehicles: the Mercury Redstone and the Mercury Atlas. The Redstone was used for suborbital flights, while the Atlas had enough thrust to carry the Mercury capsule into orbit. Six such vehicles flew, two suborbital and four orbital. The last was a thirty-six hour flight by Gordon Cooper, which drew the curtain on Project Mercury. All six spacecraft survive in museums around the country, including Liberty Bell Seven, which was lost at sea after its flight and recovered in July, 1999.