The Romance of Aircraft

CHAPTER PAGE I THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 3 II "A B C'S" OF A BALLOON 14 III EARLY BALLOON ADVENTURES 20 IV THE PARACHUTE 28 V BALLOONING IN THE GREAT WAR 36

I EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH HEAVIER-THAN-AIR MACHINES 77 II FIRST PRINCIPLES OF AN AIRPLANE 91 III THE PIONEERS 99 IV THE AIRPLANE IN THE WORLD WAR 128 V SOME OF THE PROBLEMS THE I...

On a beautiful afternoon in the latter part of the eighteenth century--June 5, 1793--a distinguished company of Frenchmen were gathered in the public square of the little villag...

Why does a balloon rise in the atmosphere?--is the very natural question we are apt to ask as we read the story of these early balloon experiments. The Montgolfier brothers them...

No sooner had the news of the remarkable balloon exploits of de Rozier and Blanchard spread throughout the nations, than people of all classes became interested in the future of...

The story of the parachute is inevitably linked in memory with that of the balloon. Those who look back a few years can remember when exhibition balloons were in their heyday, a...

If you went down New York Bay during wartime you probably saw at the entrance of the harbor a United States cruiser stationed, with a "kite" balloon attached to it, standing sen...

No sooner had the Montgolfiers and their colleagues constructed their earliest balloon models than scientific men and the general public, aroused by the possibilities of navigat...

It is to the two French brothers Lebaudy that France and the Allies owe the credit for the development of the big military dirigible such as is used in the present War. These br...

When in August, 1914, the sinister black cloud of a world war appeared on the horizon, only the Hun was prepared for the life and death struggle in the air. His formidable fleet...

For many centuries before the ascension of the first Montgolfier balloon, which, as we have seen, marked the beginning of aerial flight, men had dreamed of a different method of...

It is almost humorous that man, who for centuries had nourished the secret ambition of acquiring wings, should have found his dream imperfectly realized in the twentieth century...

While the Wright brothers, lacking both funds and encouragement to continue their remarkable project, remained, from 1905 to 1908 in almost total obscurity--their wonderful flyi...

Picture to yourself a scene outside one of the Allied hangars or airplane sheds, just back of the front lines, while the Great War is in progress. It is early morning, gray and...

Every American must feel a glow of pride when he stops to think that it was two of his fellow-countrymen, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who invented the airplane. But it is largely...

Airplanes, like men, are not all alike, even when they are in the same line of work and performing the self-same duties. In war time, every gunner has his own little peculiariti...

When we read the story of the wonderful contributions made by France, England, Italy, and America to the progress of aviation and to the romantic history of the heavier-than-air...

Heroes of the air in peace times have been numerous. We already know the stories of many of the pioneers of aircraft, who risked their lives in situations involving the utmost p...

Out in the forests of the great Northwest there stands a giant spruce tree, tall and straight and strong, whose top looks out across the gentle slopes of the Rocky Mountain foot...

It is a rocky road that leads from the obscurity of civilian life to the glory and achievement of a successful "bird-man." The man--or the boy--who elects to follow it must be p...

Since the days when the first man ascended into the clouds in a Montgolfier fire balloon, and since the days when the Wright brothers tried their first gliding experiments and p...