Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Comprehensive and balanced." Science
Review
"Hallion, an international authority on aviation, draws on journals, diaries, and memoirs of aviation pioneers....Filled with rare photographs and drawings, a decisive work on the history of flying." Booklist
Review
"Quality writing and solid research combine to make Hallion's study a major contribution to the centennial of the Wright brothers' landmark achievement." Library Journal
Review
"Along with profiles of major figures such as the Wright Brothers and Octave Chanute, Hallion takes care to bring to light lesser-known figures." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Author of numerous awardwinning books and formerly The U.S. Air Force Historian, Richard Hallion teaches widely at American and foreign universities and defense colleges, most recently at the U.S. Army War College and at the Smithsonian Institution as the Charles A. Lindbergh Visiting Professor of Aerospace History. He has also been a Distinguished Lecturer, and is a Life Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Hallion has gained flying experience as a mission observer in a wide range of civil and military aircraft, served as a NASA historian, and in 1974, joined the Smithsonian Institution as one of the founding curators of the Natioanl Air and Space Museum.
Table of Contents
Pt.1: Preparing the way: From antiquity to the enlightenment. Of dreams and desires. Conflicting ideas and societies -- Pt.2: Ethereal flight: Inventing the balloon and airship, 1782-1900. The astonishing year. Exploiting the balloon. The quest for steerable flight -- Pt.3: Winged flight: Early conceptions of the airplane, 1792-1903. Sir George Cayley and the birth of aeronautics. The frustrated hopes of French aeronautics. Anglo-American school of power and lift -- Pt.4: The airmen triumphant: Lilienthal, Chanute, and the Wrights, 1891-1905. The Lilienthal legacy. Enter the Wrights. "They done it, they done it, damned if they ain't flew!" -- Prt.5: Europe resurgent, 1905-1909. "L'affaire Wright". "The flying industry is already born". "The age of flight is the age we live in." -- Pt.6: Expansion, incorporation, maturation: Beginning the aerial age, 1910-1914. Global expansion. The loss of innocence. Triumphs of speed and distance -- Pt.7: Tennyson fulfilled: Putting prophecy into practice, 1914 and afterwards. Into the whirlwind. Grappling in the central blue. Reflections on the beginning of the aerial age. Afterword: Technology of light or technology of darkness? : Considering flight after 9/11/01.