Researches and Experiments in Aerial Navigation
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908. First printing, thus. Black and white plates. In original wraps. Very good. Some minor edge wear to extremities and mild soil to gray printed wraps. Textblock has a few very short tears along uncut fore edge, some light foxing to edges as well.
This is a collection of four articles on early mechanical aviation by Samuel P. Langley. These were originally printed in various Smithsonian Reports between 1897 and 1904 but were collected and published here together for the first time in 1908. Many of the illustrations are from photographs by Alexander Graham Bell. One fold-out photograph depicts Langley's steam-powered Aerodrome #5 in flight over the Potomac river.
Langley was the first to produce a heavier-than-air machine which could fly a considerable distance supported and propelled by its own engine. He first demonstrated his "Aerodrome," as the machine was called, on May 6, 1896. He continued to construct subsequent models, powered by both steam and gasoline engines, which made successful flights. Imagine...a steam powered airplane!
While Langley's research and experiments in aviation produced some important advances--particularly in the area of airplane engines--his work is eclipsed by the Wright Brothers because, unlike their machine, Langley's Aerodrome required an external catapult launch mechanism and it never successfully achieved manned flight.
This is an important an quite scarce relic of that era of the birth of aviation.
Item #1026
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