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AN EVENT OF OHIO'S SESQUICENTIENNIAL
OHIO is host to the Nation this year with state-wide Open House celebrations of its Sesquicentennial. Just 150 years ago Ohio became a State - the seventeenth of the Nation.
  Throughout 1953, in community after community local Sesquicentennial celebrations have or will be held, as this is the year for everyone from everywhere to "Come to Ohio and See America." The National Aircraft Show is one of its major events.
  In 1949, the State Legislature set up the Ohio Sesquicentennial Commission to plan and to arrange for this 150th birthday party. 
  Statewise, the Sesquicentennial Commission and the 23 committees it established scheduled more than a thousand programs in commemoration of specific events in early Ohio history.
  Heading this list were the legislative ceremonies surrounding March 1 - Ohio's official birthday; the opening of "Adena," home of Ohio's first Governor, Thomas Worthington, at Chillicothe; expansion of the National Air Races into the 1953 National Aircraft Show and 50th Anniversary of Powered Flight at Dayton to honor the Wright Brothers; the gala "Seventeenth Star" at the State Fair in Columbus; and development of programs for schools, historical radio programs, commemorative stamp, special license plate, and the Ohio Junior Chamber of Commerce selection of "Miss Ohio Sesquicentennial" who became Washington's "Cheery Blossom Queen." 
    The heart of the Ohio Sesquicentennial celebration has been in the varied programs of each county.
     Towns and cities throughout this State have pointed with pride to their outstanding sons and daughters of the past and present.
     A list of men and women of national and international fame, who were the sons and daughters of Ohio, is long and impressive. In practically every field, Ohioans have gained prominence as military leaders, artists, journalists, writers, inventors, industrial pioneers and statesmen.
     Among the United States presidents and vice presidents from Ohio are Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, James A. Garfield, Thomas Andrews, Charles W. Fairbanks and Charles G. Dawes.
     Great military leaders include General James B. McPherson, General George A. Custer, General William Tecumseh Sherman and General Philip H. Sheridan. 
     Thomas A. Edison; Wilbur and Orville Wright; Charles F. Brush, inventor of arc light; Charles M. Hall, discoverer of process of extracting aluminum; Charles H. Kettering; and Thomas Midgley, Jr., discoverer of tetraethyl lead, are inventors whom Ohio can claim as its own.
     Also, there are the industrial pioneers -- John D. Rockefeller, B. F. Goodrich, Harvey S. Firestone, Sr., John
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MAN'S CONQUEST OF THE AIR
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Saluting the Wright brothers of Dayton who brought aviation to the world
By Herbert E. Prentke
The year 1903 marked the beginning of a new era in the progress of mankind . . . for on December 17th of that year, the first power-driven heavier-than-air machine ever to achieve sustained flight rose from its starting track on the bleak windswept dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It soared through the air for a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds. Orville Wright was at the controls; Wilbur Wright balanced the plane at the take-off. Short as this first flight was, it nevertheless marked the beginning of man's conquest of the air. 
    It was the first of several flights that day but there is no indication that the Wright brothers were aware of the enormity of their achievement. They had accomplished what man had been striving for since the advent of history. Where they flew at a speed of 31 miles per hour, we, just fifty years later, have had a flight speed of 1238 miles per hour. The $1,500 Wright "Kitty Hawk" grossed 750 pounds whereas today's B-52, for example, with prototype, cost over twenty-one million dollars, grosses about 350,000 pounds and will top 600 miles per hour. The "Kitty Hawk's" four-cylinder engine turned out 16 horsepower as compared to the 160,000 horsepower at cruising speed developed by the eight P&W J-57 engines of the B-52. The distance flown by the "Kitty Hawk" on its first flight was but a few feet longer than the wing span of the B-52. This comparative data merely tends to serve as a yardstick of accomplishment in so short a period of time. 
   The Wrights were not a lucky pair of bicycle mechanics who succeeded in flight, where others more educated before them had failed. The ideas they developed and substituted proved them to be the best aeronautical engineers of their time. Through their own experiments they discovered that certain theories of aerodynamics previously accepted as accurate were contrary to their findings. Two of their developments made it possible to build an aeroplane that would fly: one was a crude wind tunnel, the other an ingenious set of balances made out of old hacksaw blades. From their wind tunnel, probably the first in the world, they developed their own pressure tables for testing widely varied wing sections. Their solution to the problem of insuring lateral balance also became a claim as a fundamental principle in the original Wright patent. Their idea of a movable tail led to the system of control generally used today . . . the inde-
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NATIONAL AIRCRAFT SHOW                                                 21