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A HISTORY OF AERONAUTICS

Trial of full-size Langley Aerodrome, 8th December, 1903.

Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

Frontispiece.


A
History of Aeronautics

by
E. CHARLES VIVIAN

WITH A SECTION ON PROGRESS IN
AEROPLANE DESIGN

by
LIEUT.-COL. W. LOCKWOOD MARSH, O.B.E.

NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921


To
MY WITNESS
OCT. 21ST 1919
V.


vii

FOREWORD

Although successful heavier-than-air flight is lessthan two decades old, and successful dirigible propulsionantedates it by a very short period, the mass of experimentand accomplishment renders any one-volumehistory of the subject a matter of selection. In additionto the restrictions imposed by space limits, the materialfor compilation is fragmentary, and, in many cases,scattered through periodical and other publications.Hitherto, there has been no attempt at furnishing adetailed account of how the aeroplane and the dirigibleof to-day came to being, but each author who has treatedthe subject has devoted his attention to some specialphase or section. The principal exception to this rule—Hildebrandt—wrotein 1906, and a good many ofhis statements are inaccurate, especially with regardto heavier-than-air experiment.

Such statements as are made in this work are, wherepossible, given with acknowledgment to the authoritieson which they rest. Further acknowledgment is dueto Lieut.-Col. Lockwood Marsh, not only for thesection on aeroplane development which he has contributedto the work, but also for his kindly assistanceand advice in connection with the section on aerostation.The author’s thanks are also due to the Royal AeronauticalSociety for free access to its valuable libraryof aeronautical literature, and to Mr A. Vincent Clarkeviiifor permission to make use of his notes on the developmentof the aero engine.

In this work is no claim to originality—it has beena matter mainly of compilation, and some stories, notablythose of the Wright Brothers and of Santos Dumont,are better told in the words of the men themselves thanany third party could tell them. The author claims,however, that this is the first attempt at recording thefacts of development and stating, as fully as is possiblein the compass of a single volume, how flight andaerostation have evolved. The time for a critical historyof the subject is not yet.

In the matter of illustrations, it has been found verydifficult to secure suitable material. Even the officialseries of photographs of aeroplanes in

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