To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for FlightJames Tobin, award-winning author of Ernie Pyle's War and The Man He Became, has penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary rival Samuel Langley across ten years and two continents to conquer the air. For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the US War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths—Langley’s toward oblivion, the Wrights’ toward the heavens—though not before facing countless other obstacles. With a historian’s accuracy and a novelist’s eye, Tobin has captured an extraordinary moment in history. To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 7 | |
Chapter Two A Slight Possibility | 36 |
Chapter Three Some Practical Experiments | 57 |
Chapter Four Truth and Error Intimately Mixed | 88 |
Chapter Five The Possibility of Exactness | 115 |
Interlude | 193 |
Chapter Eight What Hath God Wrought? | 204 |
Chapter Nine The Clean Air of the Heavens | 221 |
Chapter Ten A Flying Machine at Anchor | 246 |
Chapter Twelve The Light on Glorys Plume | 300 |
Chapter Thirteen The Greatest Courage and Achievements | 327 |
Epilogue | 358 |
Acknowledgments | 367 |
A Note on Sources | 409 |
Other editions - View all
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight James Tobin Limited preview - 2004 |
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight James Tobin Limited preview - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
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