DK – Flight. 100 Years of Aviation

Автор: DK
Название книги: Flight. 100 Years of Aviation
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Авиация и космонавтика
Страницы: 440
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

One hundred years ago the world
was a very different place. The
United States was emerging as a world
economic power, but had yet to realize
its full potential. Europe was at peace,
tenuous as it was, while trouble in Russia
was a portent of war and revolution to
come. Much of the rest of the world
remained as either economic or political
colonies of the dominant powers.
Millions of Europe and Asia’s poor
continued to travel days and weeks by
steamship to seek a new life in the
United States. Once there, steam-driven
trains were the primary means of longdistance
overland transport for immigrant
and citizen alike. The vast rail network
linked most communities and enabled
those who could afford it to ride across the
country in less than a week. Nevertheless,
once settled, most Americans stayed at
home and few ever travelled more than
25 miles from their place of birth.
And so it was across the rest of the
developed world.
Transportation was taking the first
tenuous steps that would soon change the
world forever. With the invention of the
internal combustion engine, in the late
nineteenth century, new possibilities of
motive force became available. By 1903 the
automobile was set to challenge the horse.
Transportation would soon change even
more dramatically because of a new
invention – the aeroplane. Within the
century that followed, humankind took to
the air, led by the pioneering example of
Wilbur and Orville Wright. First in frail
craft, but soon in sturdy and reliable
machines, aviators shattered long-standing
barriers of time and distance. By midcentury
air travel was common, and by
the late 1950s it had replaced the train
and steamship as the preferred mode
of transport. By the last quarter of the
twentieth century, with large, efficient
jet-powered aircraft, air travel was
commonplace and affordable to all.
Flying has become second nature to
hundreds of millions of people and is
so deeply intertwined into the fabric
of society that it is impossible to imagine
a world without it.
The aeroplane also rapidly developed as a
weapon of war. Used widely during World
War I, where the techniques of air power
were initially developed, military aircraft
became an integral part of warfare by
World War II. The advent of jet power,
and sophisticated electronics perfected
during and after the Cold War, has now
turned the aircraft into a feared weapon
over the twenty-first century battlefield.
Today, 100 years after the Wright
brothers first took to the air in the first
powered, controlled, heavier-than-air
machine, the political, social, and
economic challenges are different, yet,
in many respects, remarkably similar.
Today, aviation and spaceflight are critical
tools for the improvement of the human
condition and powerful instruments of
positive change.
This book is the story of that most
remarkable achievement of the twentieth
century – flight. Using superlative
historical images and extraordinary new
photography to illustrate an excellent text,
this book is a fitting tribute to the courage
and efforts of the pioneering individuals
and organizations that inspired the first
100 years of aviation.
J. R. DAILEY