Kirjahaku

Brilliant, self-trained engineers, the Wright brothers had a unique blend of native talent, character, and family experience that perfectly suited them to the task of invention but left them ill-prepared to face a world of skeptics, rivals, and officials. Using a treasure trove of Wright family correspondence and diaries, Tom Crouch skillfully weaves the story of the airplane's invention into the drama of a unique and unforgettable family. He shows us exactly how and why these two obscure bachelors from Dayton, Ohio, were able to succeed where so many better-trained, better-financed rivals had failed.

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.

This richly illustrated book chronicles lighter-than-air flight from Archimedes' discovery of the principle of buoyancy to the latest in sport balloons and plans for future airships. Far more than a timeline of events, Lighter Than Air focuses on the people-flamboyant and daring, heroes and scoundrels-who made history in the sky. Here are the eighteenth-century pioneers who first took to the skies, the peripatetic aeronauts who criss-crossed two continents a century later, the airmen who manned the great rigid airships, and the intrepid balloonists who flew their craft across oceans and continents in the years following World War II. The first half of the volume recounts the invention of the balloon, the golden age of the professional aerial showmen in Europe and America, the use of balloons for aerial reconnaissance, and the key role of balloons in scientific research. The second half presents the rich tale of the airship from eighteenth-century dreams to twentieth-century reality. These chapters describe the early development of the pressure airship, the emergence of the rigid airship and its golden age in the first half of the twentieth century, and the military and civil applications of these aerial behemoths. The author concludes by discussing modern blimps, sport balloons, and dreams of a future for airships. The highly accessible text is complemented with a wealth of prints and photos from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the Musee de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget, the Zepplin-Museum at Zepplinheim, and the Imperial War Museum in London. Written by award-winning aeronautical historian Tom D. Crouch, Lighter Than Air brings to life the color and excitement of buoyant flight.

Discover the incredible history of the Smithsonian as it grew to meet the needs of a nation The English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson never visited the United States, yet he bequeathed his estate to the country to establish the Smithsonian Institution. The rest is history, told in rich detail in Smithson's Gamble. Follow the fascinating growth and development of the world's largest museum and research complex during its first 60 years. This book reveals how, as it defined a role rooted in curiosity and exploration, the Smithsonian helped to shape the nation's developing identity. The Smithsonian evolved from a small, narrowly focused organization into an institution leading the way in fields from astrophysics to zoology, dedicated to sharing knowledge with the citizens of a democracy through publications, the National Museum, and expositions and fairs across the country. Smithsonian researchers, and the hundreds of citizen scientists that they recruited, created a collection that documented the natural and human history of a continent. The American conservation movement and a national weather service are rooted at the Smithsonian. It is a story filled with fascinating characters, twists and turns, and moments of triumph and tragedy, complete with political machinations, a bit of backstabbing, accusations of murder, and the occasional scandal. Tom D. Crouch, a Smithsonian veteran of almost 45 years, paints a robust picture of a unique American establishment and its lasting legacies. He chronicles the trials and errors of an increasingly complex institution and all the incredible joys and innovations resulting from Smithson's gamble.

Aiming for the Stars explores the motivations, goals, trials, and triumphs of the people who pioneered space exploration from the sixteenth century to the modern era. Tom D. Crouch describes space travel's emergence from the pages of science fiction into the laboratories of twentieth-century rocketeers such as Wernher von Braun, who masterminded Nazi rocket development and later became a key figure in the U.S. space program, and Sergei Korolev, an engineer whose successful launches became the foundation of Soviet Cold War policy. The book also explains the goals nad missions of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and describes the 1986 Challenge disaster, the spacefaring adventurs of astronaut Shannon Lucid, and the fortunes of the Mir space station in the wake of glasnost. Linking individual obsessions and achievements with the political events and social currents that surrounded them, the book offers a wide-ranging view of the attempt to explore the final frontier.