A Christmas Flight: Aviation Pioneer, Dr. William Christmas - Softcover

Mary Buckingham Lipsey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934285137 ISBN 13: 9781934285138

Publisher: History4All, Inc., 2013

Synopsis

Although he's not remembered as such anymore, Dr. William Christmas invented inset ailerons, which are still used over 100 years later on nearly every modern aircraft. His contemporaries included the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss.

A Christmas Flight is the first-ever biography about the talented, yet now forgotten, man who made many important contributions to aviation. He built his first plane in secret on a farm in Fairfax County, VA, then moved his operations to College Park Air Field in Maryland, and later established a factory on Long Island, NY.

A gifted inventor, Dr. Christmas was awarded his first patent, one of many, at age 18. He also designed an underground airport and a flying hotel.

A Christmas Flight has 60 illustrations, 3 maps, an appendix of his aviation-related patents, and a timeline listing the aeronautical accomplishments of Dr. Christmas alongside those of Dr. Samuel P. Langley and the Wright brothers.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Buckingham Lipsey is co-author of Braddocks True Gold: 20th Century Life in the Heart of Fairfax County. She taught 7th grade history for 30 years. Lipsey has volunteered at the National Archives, Washington, DC, since 2004 and at the National Museum of American History since 1980.

Review:

"I wrote a brief article on Dr. William Christmas for the Smithsonian's Air & Space magazine (Feb/Mar 2000) and his contributions to the world of flight. If I had had Lipsey's current book, A Christmas Flight, on hand then, I would have been much kinder to Dr. Christmas.

The third American to pilot a powered aircraft, Christmas ultimately held well over a dozen patents in aviation and related fields. His best known airplane, the Christmas Bullet, was a remarkedly advanced but deadly little biplane that achieved almost 200 mph in 1918, when the top speed of the vaunted Spad XIII was 139 mph.

Lipsey presents Christmas as a serious, talented inventor. He comes off as a man driven to advance aircraft design. Profusely illustrated, and with the author's well-researched, factual approach, this book is a cornucopia of information on one of America's most ingenious, yet almost forgotten, aviation pioneers." --William F. Hallstead III

About this edition

• Publisher: History4All, Inc.
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1934285137
• ISBN 13: 9781934285138
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 205