Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity Through the First World WarOxford University Press, USA, 2003 M05 8 - 531 páginas The invention of flight represents the culmination of centuries of thought and desire. Kites and rockets sparked our collective imagination. Then the balloon gave humanity its first experience aloft, though at the mercy of the winds. The steerable airship that followed had more practicality, yet a number of insurmountable limitations. But the airplane truly launched the Aerial Age, and its subsequent impact--from the vantage of a century after the Wright Brother's historic flight on December 17, 1903--has been extraordinary.Richard Hallion, a distinguished international authority on aviation, offers a bold new examination of aircraft history, stressing its global roots. The result is an interpretive history of uncommon sweep, complexity, and warmth. Taking care to place each technological advance in the context of its own period as well as that of the evolving era of air travel, this ground-breaking work follows the pre-history of flight, the work of balloon and airship advocates, fruitless early attempts to invent the airplane, the Wright brothers and other pioneers, the impact of air power on the outcome of World War I, and finally the transfer of prophecy into practice as flight came to play an ever-more important role in world affairs, both military and civil.Making extensive use of extracts from the journals, diaries, and memoirs of the pioneers themselves, and interspersing them with a wide range or rare photographs and drawings, Taking Flight leads readers to the laboratories and airfields where aircraft were conceived and tested. Forcefully yet gracefully written in rich detail and with thorough documentation, this book is certain to be the standard reference for years to come on how humanity came to take to the sky, and what the Aerial Age has meant to the world since da Vinci's first fantastical designs. |
Contenido
ETHEREAL FLIGHT INVENTING THE BALLOON AND AIRSHIP 17821900 | 45 |
WINGED FLIGHT EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE AIRPLANE 17921903 | 99 |
THE AIRMEN TRIUMPHANT LILIENTHAL CHANUTE AND THE WRIGHTS 18911905 | 159 |
EUROPE RESURGENT 19051909 | 211 |
EXPANSION INCORPORATION MATURATION BEGINNING THE AERIAL AGE 19101914 | 269 |
TENNYSON FULFILLED PUTTING PROPHECY INTO PRACTICE 1914 AND AFTERWARDS | 333 |
Technology of Light or Technology of Darkness? | 405 |
Acknowledgments | 413 |
References | 415 |
505 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First ... Richard P. Hallion Vista previa limitada - 2003 |
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Ader Ader's aerial Aero Aerodrome aerodynamic Aeronautical Society Aeroplane Air Force Air Power aircraft airmen airplane airship American Army artillery attack August aviation Avion III balloon biplane Blériot bombers bombs Britain British Cayley century Charles Charles Renard Clément Ader craft Curtiss Deperdussin Dollfus and Bouché early engine Europe European experience Farman feet fighter flew flight flown Flyer flying machine France France's French German Gibbs-Smith Glenn Curtiss glider heavier-than-air invention Islamic John kite Kitty Hawk L'aérophile l'aviation land Langley later launch lift Lilienthal's Lissarrague London Louis Blériot miles military Monocoque monoplane Montgolfiers Museum National naval Octave Chanute Orville Wright Otto Lilienthal Paris patent Pénaud pilot pioneers plane previously cited propeller reconnaissance Renard rocket Royal Royal Aeronautical Society rudder Russian Santos-Dumont Sikorsky Smithsonian Institution subsequently success tion Voisin Washington Wilbur Wright wind wing World Wright Brothers Wright Papers wrote York Zeppelin