While growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Milton Wright, the Wright
Brothers' father, liked to purchase toys for his sons that he hoped
would stimulate their imagination. One of the most memorable gifts
was a toy helicopter that was designed by the French aeronautical
experimenter Alphonse Penaud. Milton gave his sons this gift in
1878, and, though it was a simple device with a stick bound to a
four-blade rotor set in a spindle, it had the intended effect-it
caused them to dream. Twenty-five years separated the gift of this
toy and their invention of the airplane, yet the Wright brothers
were convinced it had exerted an important influence. Tom Crouch
argued in The Bishop's Boys that toys like these perfectly
illustrated the significance of play for technological innovation.
He wrote, "rotary-wing toys were to intrigue and inspire
generations of children, a few of whom would, as adults, attempt to
realize the dream of flight for themselves." If the first powered
flight on 17 December 1903 represented a childhood dream realized,
it was only the first step in the rapid evolution of the airplane
from their flimsy kite-like contraption of wood and cloth to jet
airliners and rockets in space. And, as extraordinary as the
achievement of powered flight seemed in 1903, before the end of the
century, space travel also would become a dream realized. Soviet
astronaut Yuri Gagarin first circumnavigated Earth in April 1961,
and, eight years later, American astronauts took the first steps
for humankind on the Moon. It is with great pleasure that we
introduce Realizing the Dream: Biographical Essays in Honor of the
Centennial of Flight. These essays in celebration of the Wright
brothers' first flight 100 years ago grew out of presentations by a
group of prominent scholars in 2003 at a conference sponsored by
the NASA History Division and held at the Great Lakes Science
Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The volume focuses on the careers of
some of the many men and women who helped to realize the dream of
flight both through the atmosphere and beyond. These accounts are
original and compelling because they examine the history of flight
through the lens of biography. Collectively, these individuals
helped to shape American aerospace history. There are obviously
many other individuals that could, and arguably should, have been
included in this collection, but we believe that the cross section
of diverse individuals contained in this volume is important
because it is symbolic of the dream of flight as a whole. These
people all devoted their lives, and sometimes even sacrificed them,
to the demands required for its realization. The reasons behind the
dreams were diverse. The technological potential first demonstrated
by the Wright brothers enabled those who followed them to use
flight as a means of racial uplift, gender equalization, personal
adventure, commercial gain, military superiority, and space
exploration. The history of flight is more than a story of
technology; it had important cultural consequences as well, and
these are some of the themes that the following biographies
explore. We have arranged the essays roughly chronologically,
though the careers of the people described here often span more
than one period of history. None of the people in this volume were
inventors like the Wright brothers, but their contributions to
flight were nevertheless significant. They were daredevil pilots,
entrepreneurs, business men and women, military strategists, and
managers of large-scale technology who advanced the art, science,
and business of air and space travel, often through sheer force of
character. The final paper serves as an epilogue as well as a
tribute to the Wright brothers. It describes a reenactment of their
important glider experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where
the Wrights' childhood dream was first realized.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
