Unlocking the Sky - Glenn Curtiss and the race to invent the airplane

Shulman, Seth

ISBN 10: 0060196335 / ISBN 13: 9780060196332

Published by Stated first edition, published by HarperCollins, N.Y., 2002., 2002

About this Item

Near fine with very good to fine dust jacket. Dust jacket is lightly bumped along top and bottom edges. 258 pages with index plus 20 illustrations.

Seller Inventory # 10741

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Unlocking the Sky - Glenn Curtiss and the race to invent the airplane
• Publisher: Stated first edition, published by HarperCollins, N.Y., 2002.
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060196335
• ISBN 13: 9780060196332
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

The first public flight in the United States. The first commercially sold airplane. The remarkable first flight from one American city to another. The first pilot license issued in this country. These were just a few of the milestones in the career of Glenn Hammond Curtiss, perhaps the greatest aviator and aeronautical inventor of all time.

Unlocking the Sky tells his extraordinary story -- a tale of the race to design, refine, and manufacture a manned flying machine that took place in the air, on the ground, on the water, and in the courtrooms of America. Who would be the first to make a workable airplane, and almost as critical, who would control the right to use or sell this revolutionary technology?

While Orville and Wilbur Wright threw a veil of secrecy over their own flying machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, Curtiss teamed up with engineers in America and abroad, freely exchanging information in an attempt to resolve the most difficult challenges in constructing a reliable and stable airplane. In 1908, Curtiss piloted his groundbreaking June Bug in the first public flight in America. Fiercely jealous, the Wright brothers took to the courts to keep Curtiss and his airplanes out of the sky and off the market.

Unlocking the Sky elevates Curtiss to his rightful place as an all-American hero. Ultimately, the Wright brothers were unsuccessful in their efforts to monopolize the airplane. With plot-twisting interventions from Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Samuel P. Langley, and, of course, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Seth Shulman's gripping narrative captures the dynamism of an era, a time much like our own, dominated by the struggle for control over fast-paced and unsettling technological change. It is a story of invention and adventure that shatters longheld myths about the birth of the airplane and raises profound questions about the way we remember history.

About the Author

Seth Shulman has worked for two decades as a writer and editor specializing in issues of science, technology, and the environment. His work has appeared in Nature, Discover, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, Technology Review, and the Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications. He is the author of three books, most recently Owning the Future. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.