Wind and Beyond: A Documentary Journey Into the History of Aerodynamics in America. Volume 2. Reinventing the Airplane

摘要

Airplane travel is surely one of the most significant technological achievements of the last century. The impact of the airplane goes far beyond the realm of the history of technology and touches upon virtually every aspect of society from economics to politics to engineering and science. While space exploration often claims more public glory than aeronautics research, many more individuals have been able to fly within the Earths atmosphere than above it. Thus aeronautics and air travel have had an enormous practical impact on many more individuals. The first two volumes in the Wind and Beyond series and the succeeding four now in preparation all cover the impact of aerodynamic development on the evolution of the airplane in America. As the six-volume series will ultimately demonstrate, just as the airplane is a defining technology of the twentieth century, aerodynamics has been the defining element of the airplane. The forthcoming volumes will proceed roughly in chronological order, covering such developments as the advent of commercial airliners, flying boats, rotary aircraft, supersonic flight, and hypersonic flight. This series is designed as an aeronautics companion to the Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (NASA SP-4407) series of books. As with Exploring the Unknown, the documents collected during this research project were assembled from diverse public and private sources. A major repository of primary source materials relative to the history of the civil space program is the NASA Historical Reference Collection in the NASA History Division. Historical materials housed at NASA Field Centers, academic institutions, and Presidential libraries were other sources of documents considered for inclusion, as were papers in the archives of private individuals and corporations.