The Pocket Encyclopedia of World Aircraft in Colour: Balloons and Airships, 1783 - 1973. Editor of the English Edition, Kenneth Munson. From Translation Prepared by Erik Hildesheim. Illustrated by Otto Frello.
first edition
1973 · London
by Ege, Lennart.
London: Blandford Press, (1973). First English Edition. Octavo, red cloth (hardcover), 234 pp. Near-Fine, with former-owner bookplate; in a Near-Fine dust jacket with lightly sunned spines. From dust jacket: It is nearly two hundred years since man first left the ground and travelled through the air in a vehicle of his own design. His aerial carriage was only a frail, paper-covered craft with a burning brazier at its base to provide the hot air that raised it from the ground; but from such humble beginnings stemmed the inspiration that has since carried him out to worlds beyond his own. After hot air came hydrogen as the lifting medium, and after the free balloon came the airship, which could be powered and steered in flight. In 80 well-chosen examples this volume illustrates two centuries of progress in lighter-than-air flight, from the Montgolfier brothers’ original cloud in a paper bag of 1783 to its present-day counterpart flown by sportsmen in many parts of the world. In between lie the famous, the infamous, and the almost unknown: great pioneer names like Lebaudy, Charles and Perseval; the giant Zeppelin airships that operated the world’s first airline services in 1910 - 14 before their military brethren, those monsters of the purple twilight, rained terror on London in the First World War; the great Italian polar airships of the 1920s; the balloon bombs launched by Japan against the United States in World War 2; headline-ma=ers like the Hindenburg and R 101; the unsung but highly successful blimps of the US Navy; and many more... (Inventory #: 51693bd)