The invention of flight represents the culmination of centuries of thought and desire. Kites and rockets sparked our collective imagination. Then the balloon gave humanity its first experience aloft, though at the mercy of the winds. The steerable airship that followed had more practicality, yet a number of insurmountable limitations. But the airplane truly launched the Aerial Age, and its subsequent impact--from the vantage of a century after the Wright Brother's historic flight on December 17, 1903--has been extraordinary. Richard Hallion, a distinguished international authority on aviation, offers a bold new examination of aircraft history, stressing its global roots. The result is an interpretive history of uncommon sweep, complexity, and warmth. Taking care to place each technological advance in the context of its own period as well as that of the evolving era of air travel, this ground-breaking work follows the pre-history of flight, the work of balloon and airship advocates, fruitless early attempts to invent the airplane, the Wright brothers and other pioneers, the impact of air power on the outcome of World War I, and finally the transfer of prophecy into practice as flight came to play an ever-more important role in world affairs, both military and civil. Making extensive use of extracts from the journals, diaries, and memoirs of the pioneers themselves, and interspersing them with a wide range or rare photographs and drawings, Taking Flight leads readers to the laboratories and airfields where aircraft were conceived and tested. Forcefully yet gracefully written in rich detail and with thorough documentation, this book is certain to be the standard reference for years to come on how humanity came to take to the sky, and what the Aerial Age has meant to the world since da Vinci's first fantastical designs.

Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War

History

HALLION, Richard P.

Military

Oxford University Press

"If you really wish to learn" wrote Wilbur Wright, "you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial". And even before the Wright Flyer took off on its history-making first flight, intrepid researchers had been testing many different flying machines: the hapless tower jumpers of the Dark Ages; the balloonist of the eighteenth century; the glider builders of the nineteenth. In Test Pilots, Richard P. Hallion chronicles the history of test pilots from these early explorers to today's military men.

Test pilots: The frontiersmen of flight

DOUBLEDAY

Explains how airplanes fly, traces the development of aeronautic technology, and tells the stories of experimental planes and daring test pilots

Designers and Test Pilots (Epic of Flight)

Science & Math

Technology

Time-Life Education

Chronicles the history of battlefield air attack from 1911, when the airplane was first used in war, to the end of World War II.

Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1910-1945

University Alabama Press

“In The Naval Air War in Korea, Dr. Hallion has captured the fact, feel- ing, and fancy of a very important conflict in aviation history, in- cluding the highly significant facets of the transition from piston to jet-propelled combat aircraft.”—Norman Polmar, author of Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 18th Edition

The Naval Air War in Korea

Looks at the role of naval aviation in the Korean War, describes aircraft used by the Navy, and looks at U.S. strategy

Naval Air War in Korea/The

Literature & Fiction

United States

Zebra Books

Essays, historical matter, and photographs combine to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first powered, sustained, and controlled heavier-than-air flight

The Wright Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus

Smithsonian Inst. Pr.

TEST PILOTS : The Frontiersmen of Flight

Americas

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

Second Library Copy. San Diego Air and Space Museum.

Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918

World

Nautical & Aviation Pub Co of Amer

“In The Naval Air War in Korea, Dr. Hallion has captured the fact, feel- ing, and fancy of a very important conflict in aviation history, in- cluding the highly significant facets of the transition from piston to jet-propelled combat aircraft.”âNorman Polmar, author of Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 18th Edition

Naval Air War in Korea

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HALLION, Richard P.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HALLION, Richard P.