A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875-1905

by Tom D. Crouch

Overview

The story of the talented American engineers and adventurers who labored to conquer gravity in a flying machine.

When Orville and Wilbur Wright soared over Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina's outer banks and solved the problem of aerial navigation, they wrote the last chapter in a long story. For decades prior, a small community of engineers, scientists, and dreamers—men named Chanute and Langley and Herring—had tried to make the ascent in every conceivable craft, from kites and gliders to an assortment of powered flying models.

These imaginative people and their wonderful contraptions are brought to life in Tom Crouch's classic A Dream of Wings. In the quest for flight, aeronautical societies were formed and broke apart, successes were celebrated, hopes rose and fell, and lessons were learned and built upon. The dreamers who blazed the path to a flying machine are bravely realized in these delightful pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393322279
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/17/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Tom D. Crouch, author of The Bishop's Boys and A Dream of Wings, is curator emeritus of the aeronautics division at the National Air & Space Museum. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

Table of Contents

	Preface to the 1989 Edition	8
	Acknowledgments	9
1	Huffman Prairie, 1994	13
2	An Engineer Discovers the Airplane	20
3	Experiments in Aerodynamics	42
4	Chanute and Progress in Flying Machines	61
5	A Meeting in Chicago	78
6	Boston: The Third Circle	101
7	S. P. Langley: The Scientist as Engineer	127
8	Lilienthal and the Americans	157
9	Chanute: The Glider Years	175
10	Herring Alone, 1896-1898	203
11	Two Gentlemen from Dayton	223
12	The Great Aerodrome	255
13	December 1903: The Month of the Flying Machines	284
	Epilogue: The Old Order Passes, 1905-1948	306
	Notes	311
	Bibliography	330
	Index	339

Editorial Reviews

"A fine job of illuminating many important but previously obscure men who were vital to the development of heavier-than-air craft."

|Los Angeles Times

**** A reprint of the Norton edition of 1981 which is included in BCL3. Too important a history of early American flight to have been printed on acidic paper. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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