The Dominion of the Air: The Story of Aerial Navigation
479 pages•about 10 h to read•Public domain in the USA (Project Gutenberg)
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About this book
A history of aeronautics, the book follows ballooning and the effort to make controlled flight practical, giving attention to both machines and the behavior of the air. When hydrogen proved costly and apt to leak, Charles Green’s switch to gas supplied by town networks made balloon inflation far more workable. In discussing weather, Bacon notes that winds moving in different directions can remain sharply separated, a finding relevant to forecasting in Britain. Later, he weighs the prospects of petrol-powered airships against heavier-than-air flight and considers Sir H. Maxim’s experiments.
