"Vivian, Charles E - History of Aeronautics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vivian Charles E)

Part III--AEROSTATICS
I. BEGINNINGS
II. THE FIRST DIRIGIBLES
III. SANTOS-DUMONT
IV. THE MILITARY DIRIGIBLE
V. BRITISH AIRSHIP DESIGN
VI. THE AIRSHIP COMMERCIALLY
VII. KITE BALLOONS

PART IV--ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
I. THE VERTICAL TYPE
II. THE VEE TYPE
III. THE RADIAL TYPE
IV. THE ROTARY TYPE
V. THE HORIZONTALLY-OPPOSED ENGINE
VI. THE TWO-STROKE CYCLE ENGINE
VII. ENGINES OF THE WAR PERIOD

APPENDICES



PART I

THE EVOLUTION OF THE AEROPLANE

I. THE PERIOD OF LEGEND

The blending of fact and fancy which men call legend reached its
fullest and richest expression in the golden age of Greece, and
thus it is to Greek mythology that one must turn for the best
form of any legend which foreshadows history. Yet the
prevalence of legends regarding flight, existing in the records
of practically every race, shows that this form of transit was a
dream of many peoples--man always wanted to fly, and imagined
means of flight.

In this age of steel, a very great part of the inventive genius
of man has gone into devices intended to facilitate transport,
both of men and goods, and the growth of civilisation is in
reality the facilitation of transit, improvement of the means of
communication. He was a genius who first hoisted a sail on a
boat and saved the labour of rowing; equally, he who first
harnessed ox or dog or horse to a wheeled vehicle was a
genius--and these looked up, as men have looked up from the
earliest days of all, seeing that the birds had solved the
problem of transit far more completely than themselves. So it
must have appeared, and there is no age in history in which some
dreamers have not dreamed of the conquest of the air; if the