The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age

The format is approximately 10.375 inches by 10.25 inches. 240 pages. Illustrations (photographs and drawings). Bibliography. Index. The dust jacket is price clipped. Inscribed by Peter L. Jakab and signed by Tom D. Crouch on the title page. The inscription reads For Dusty, With all best wishes, Peter L. Jakab. This book was produced in connection with the exhibition "The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age". Tom Day Crouch (born February 28, 1944)[2] is an American aeronautics historian and curator. An employee of the Ohio Historical Society, 1968–1974, Crouch planned the exhibits for the Neil Armstrong Museum, Wapakoneta, Ohio and the history exhibitions for the Ohio Historical Center. He accepted a curatorial position with the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in 1974, and prepared exhibitions for the opening of that building in 1976. He was named chairman of the aeronautics department of the NASM in 1990, and in 1999 was named senior curator, aeronautics. Crouch was appointed by then-president William J. Clinton to chair the federal advisory board planning activities commemorating the first flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 2003. Crouch is the author of some fifteen books and many articles, primarily on topics related to the history of flight technology. Peter L. Jakab holds a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University. Jakab also serves as a Curator of Aeronautics at the museum. He has curated numerous exhibitions and frequently lectured on the history of technology, the history of invention, and the Wright brothers and pioneer aviation. With the hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers history-making flight at Kitty Hawk, world attention is once again turning to these intrepid American inventors. Written by two of the world's leading experts on the Wrights, The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age will provide a definitive, richly illustrated look at the lives of the brothers and their world-changing invention. Wilbur and Orville were owners of a bicycle shop in the heartland. But it was invention, engineering, and the new possibilities of manned flight that obsessed them. In just three years, they went from designing and flying a glider and creating a test wind tunnel to Wilbur's history-making moments in December 1903 above the dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In moving prose, Crouch and Jakab explain the Wrights' achievements and the moments of their great successes, and they paint a masterful personal portrait of the two genius personalities and, most important, the world of pioneering aviation in which they operated. Poignant archival photographs throughout the book capture that world, where ox carts and airplanes co-existed and where two determined brothers from Dayton were celebrated by presidents and kings. But the most poignant of all the images remains that of an airplane, almost kite-like in its simplicity, struggling skyward from the dunes at Kitty Hawk. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus [Portions adapted from Crouch's 1989 book "The Bishop's Boys].…