Viewing page 441 of 468

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

SKY STORMING YANKEE
The Story of Glenn Curtiss
By Clara Studer   Illustrated

[[image]]

NO TRAIT OF YANKEE CHARACTER IS MORE IMPORTANT IN the development of the nation, and more natural, than the genius for mechanical invention. And in no American is that genius more perfectly dramatized than in the career of the supreme "tinkerer," the silent, unassuming, inspired master of automotivation—Glenn Hammond Curtiss.

 In a day when we take the miracle of man's flight for granted we are likely to forget the wonder of the original undertaking—the first ungainly, pathetic and beautiful flapping of wings. Glenn Curtiss is the protagonist of that tremendous drama, and Clara Studer's careful history of his pioneering, of his intuitions and experiments, his struggles against misunderstanding and slander, his lonely service to science, is a most impressive human document.

 Here in the person of the reticent, gawky Yankee who started with a bicycle repair shop in Hammondsport, New York, who tinkered his way to modest game with motorcycle engines, who broke speed records by jockeying his own mechanical monsters to victory in racing meets, who joined with a group of other engineering idealists to achieve the phenomenon of man's flight—is the story of inspired mechanics. Here are checked and re-checked the technical details, the inside account of a crusade that started in a small town and made its way around the world.

 SKY STORMING YANKEE reveals the work and faith of such men as Alexander Graham-Bell, Langley, Casey Baldwin, Tom Selfridge and Douglas McCurdy as well as the personal history of "the amazing Mr. Curtiss." Here are the thrills of the first flight of the "June Bug," of Curtiss's capture of the Gordon Bennett Cup in competition with Bleriot, Farman, Santos-Dumont and others at the first air meet ever held.

 SKY STORMING YANKEE includes some thirty pages of valuable photographs—an album of aerial Americana.

Thirty pages of photographs
  Stackpole Sons  Publishers