Aerial Navigation. The Best Method.

  • Hardcover
  • Used
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Seller: Richard Neylon, St Marys, TAS, AustraliaRichard Neylon

4-star seller

AbeBooks seller since August 8, 2011

Hardcover

Condition: Used - Very good

£ 227.62

£ 23.37 shipping 
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Item description from seller

[Privately printed] Toledo, 1895. Octavo publisher's cloth (a bit rubbed and worn at tips); 90pp, frontispiece portrait and seven plates. Caulkin's address stamp on the front endpaper, probably added to all copies. "A concise description of a new air-ship which the author believes will be the finally accepted plan of successful aerial navigation" and a tantalising foretaste of a promised "large atlas, illustrative of all the parts of the flying ship, and kindred subjects" (preface). That's the book I want. This machine was powered by an electro-magnetic motor that Caulkins, a Toledo MD, had invented in 1865 and had waited some thirty years for the world to be ready for the next step. The mid-nineties seemed the right time, airships were in the air, so to speak. Apparently, in 1896 and 1897, there was a rash of airship sightings similar to the flying saucer boom of the fifties. This flying machine was no bit of frippery, it was massive. "The best constructed air-ships will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and some of them millions. They will be immense palaces with wings". Close inspection of the perspective view will reveal figures on the upper deck to the right of the flagpole. I must say, whether or not it got off the ground, as a bit of architecture it was a century ahead of its time. Caulkins wanted the US to own the patents but at the end comes a diaphanous threat that he would go to foreign governments. He lived another ten years after this book but further developments either evaporated or, like Keely's flying machine, were sequestered and quashed by the military.…

Seller Inventory # 8757

Bibliographic details

Title
Aerial Navigation. The Best Method.
Author
CAULKINS, Daniel.
Condition
very good
Binding
hardcover

Richard Neylon

St Marys, TAS, Australia

4-star seller

AbeBooks seller since August 8, 2011

Shipping rates from Australia to U.S.A.

Item7 to 60 business days8 to 60 business days
First item£ 23.37£ 29.40
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Rare books in the arts and sciences

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Rare books in the arts and sciences

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Richard Neylon

TAS, Australia