Visions of a Flying Machine (Smithsonian History of Aviation Series)

Airlife Publishing Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1990. Hard Cover. 8vo 1853101486 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Illustrated with photographs. 263 pages clean and tight. Eighty-five years after the invention of the airplane, the work of Wilbur and Orville Wright has lost none of its power to fascinate and intrigue us. Visions of a Flying Machine, unlike other, more biographical books on the Wrights, explores the inventive methodology that led to the Wright brothers' momentous flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. It takes us straight to the heart of their achievement, focusing on the technology and offering a clear and concise statement of precisely what the Wrights accomplished and how. At its core, this is a book about the process of invention. Jakab defines the problem of the flying machine as it was understood when the Wrights entered the field in 1899, then describes how the brothers identified and resolved the range of technical puzzles that had baffled the best-trained engineers and scientists for over a century. Along the way, Jakab encourages an understanding of and appreciation for the fundamental nature of the Wright genius-the extraordinary ability of the brothers to conceive solutions to the most difficult technical problems by visualizing these abstractions as concrete graphic images. Particularly well covered in the book are the Wrights' critical wind-tunnel experiments of 1901, which enabled them to solve an error in wing design that had long frustrated their efforts to fly. Jakab's detailed treatment of the Wright technology complements the biographical approach taken by Tom D. Crouch in his landmark study of the Wrights' lives and personalities: The Bishop's Boys. This book is about the invention of the airplane, but it also offers important insight into the fundamental nature of technical creativity in general. It will be of interest not only to Wright enthusiasts but also to all historians and students of innovation in technology and science. .