Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War [Hardcover]

Richard P. Hallion (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2003

The invention of flight represents the culmination of centuries of thought and desire. Kites and rockets sparked our collective imagination. Then the balloon gave humanity its first experience aloft, though at the mercy of the winds. The steerable airship that followed had more practicality, yet a number of insurmountable limitations. But the airplane truly launched the Aerial Age, and its subsequent impact--from the vantage of a century after the Wright Brother's historic flight on December 17, 1903--has been extraordinary.
Richard Hallion, a distinguished international authority on aviation, offers a bold new examination of aircraft history, stressing its global roots. The result is an interpretive history of uncommon sweep, complexity, and warmth. Taking care to place each technological advance in the context of its own period as well as that of the evolving era of air travel, this ground-breaking work follows the pre-history of flight, the work of balloon and airship advocates, fruitless early attempts to invent the airplane, the Wright brothers and other pioneers, the impact of air power on the outcome of World War I, and finally the transfer of prophecy into practice as flight came to play an ever-more important role in world affairs, both military and civil.
Making extensive use of extracts from the journals, diaries, and memoirs of the pioneers themselves, and interspersing them with a wide range or rare photographs and drawings, Taking Flight leads readers to the laboratories and airfields where aircraft were conceived and tested. Forcefully yet gracefully written in rich detail and with thorough documentation, this book is certain to be the standard reference for years to come on how humanity came to take to the sky, and what the Aerial Age has meant to the world since da Vinci's first fantastical designs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Flight author and former Air Force Historian Hallion has produced an expertly written single-volume history of flight, from Icarus and Daedalus to England's twin-engine "Bloody Paralyser" of WWI, that has the potential to become the standard work on the subject. The book's strength comes from its deft reconsideration of flight within a much broader context than other historians placed it-i.e., "the context of prevailing social, cultural, technological, scientific, political, and military history." Aided by numerous illustrations and archival photographs, Hallion's analysis is artful, and his writing consistently clear, whether the subject is the Chinese kite of the second century, the technical accomplishments of Enlightenment designers, the dominance of balloons and airships in the 18th and 19th centuries, the development of American and European aeronautics, or the crucial incorporation of flight technology by the military. Along with profiles of major figures such as the Wright Brothers and Octave Chanute, Hallion takes care to bring to light lesser-known figures such as Sir George Cayley, "the first of the modern pioneers" of aviation, whose airships and the publicity surrounding them, Hallion expertly notes, were the inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe's "Balloon Hoax." Hallion's efforts to debunk some of flight history's myths occasionally seem unnecessary, such as his explanation that the Wright Brothers did not work in isolation from their contemporaries (a notion already deflated by T. A. Heppenheimer's First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane). But the bulk of this valuable work should stand the test of time.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Hallion, an international authority on aviation, draws on journals, diaries, and memoirs of aviation pioneers in a book that he has divided into what he calls "seven distinct phases to the invention of flight." They are the "prehistory" of human flight from antiquity to the Enlightenment; the era of the balloon and the first airships; early interest and work on the airplane, from the end of the eighteenth century to just before the Wright brothers' flight; the development of the airplane by the Wright brothers, another American, and a German; the resurgence of European aeronautics between 1905 and the end of 1909; the international expansion of flight and its incorporation into the military; and finally an era when planes played an ever more important role in world affairs. Hallion presents his book as an attempt to integrate and interpret the early history of flight within the context of prevailing social, cultural, technological, scientific, political, and military history. Filled with rare photographs and drawings, a decisive work. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 531 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (May 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195160355
• ISBN-13: 978-0195160352
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,277,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An encyclopedic overview of the history of flight, September 14, 2003

By 

Mark Klobas (Tempe, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War (Hardcover)

This work offers an encyclopedic overview of the history of flight from the earliest legends through the First World War. Though his focus is on heavier-than-air flight, he also includes extensive coverage of the development of lighter-than-air craft and how it influenced aeronautical development. Throughout this book, Hallion demonstrates both an impressive range of knowledge and a welcome capacity for explaining some of the more technical details of aerodynamics - one that is especially welcome when it comes to explaining why so many of the Wrights' predecessors failed in their attempts to master flight.

The portrait Hallion paints is a fascinating one. He conveys the extent to which the Wright brothers built upon the achievements of both their predecessors and their contemporaries. Developments were reaching a critical mass, which - as Hallion repeatedly asserts - would almost certainly have led to heavier-than-air flight by 1910 (with the first flight most likely taking place in France). Nevertheless, the author does not underrate the Wrights' considerable accomplishment and its contribution to our history. Even after Europeans were first taking to the air in heavier-than-air craft, the Wrights' Flyer was still considerably superior to its counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic - as Wilbur Wright himself demonstrated in his 1908 tour of Europe.

As Hallion shows, however, Wilbur's tour represented the pinnacle of the Wrights' achievement. He describes the year 1909 as the year when the invention of flight ended and its refinement begins. In this phase the Europeans had a considerable advantage, for as the Wrights were pioneering flight the Europeans were focusing more on the scientific study of aerodynamics, something which Hallion sees as integral to the shift in aeronautical advancement from the New World back to the Old. Wedded to an increasingly obsolescent (and inherently dangerous) design, the Wrights no longer represented the leading edge of airplane development, one that was moving forward at a dramatic rate. Before the First World War ended, airplanes were already demonstrating speed, endurance, and applications that most people take for granted today but which almost none of the early pioneers had imagined were possible.

Yet while Hallion's book is one of the best histories of its subject, it has a number of annoying flaws. Foremost is the fact that this is very much a book of its time. The author constantly endeavors to make connections to modern concepts, with these portions - such as the conversion of currency amounts to their 2001 equivalents, or his repeated references to the events of September 11 - are likely to diminish the book's usefulness in the years to come. At times the encyclopedic nature of his account is almost annoyingly so (I have yet to find the trivia contest that required knowing that the commander of Germany's Zeppelin division was shot down by a plane which had taken off from the same city that had been a target of the first Zeppelin raid over England). Finally, he overemphasizes the historical impact of the airplane, especially in the First World War. He implies, for example, that the course of events at the battles of Tannenberg and the Marne was altered because of the use of airplanes, yet he offers no evidence to substantiate this claim beyond stressing the role the planes played as scouts while understating the other sources of information available to the commanders. Such claims are impossible to prove, of course, and only undermine the veracity of the author's historical judgment. Nevertheless, these problems should not detract from the overall value of this book in understanding both the long journey to flight and how it impacts us today.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful, June 26, 2003

By 

Barrett Tillman (Mesa, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War (Hardcover)

The reason I give "Taking Flight" 5 stars is because there's no rating for 10. This is a masterful treatment of an extremely complex subject, and while the entire history of human flight is probably beyond any single volume, Hallion's tome approaches the definitive.
Apart from a thorough assessment of flight in myth, legend, and actuality, "Taking Flight" also assesses the cultral influences leading to Kitty Hawk and beyond. In these PC days it's refreshing to see an iron-clad argument as to why only western civilization could have produced powered flight. The progression from kites to balloons, dirigibles, and airplanes is rendered with authority and style.
In another 100 years, Dick Hallion's book will still be cited.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Especially recommended for aviation buffs, August 10, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War (Hardcover)

Composed by NASA historian and international authority on aviation Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing The Aerial Age From Antiquity Through The First World War combines primary sources such as journals, diaries, and memoirs of aviation pioneers, with a scholarly and meticulous recounting of the evolution of aviation technology. Black-and-white photographs and keen attention to detail distinguish this recommended trove of an informed and informative history which is especially recommended for aviation buffs and an invaluable addition to academic and community library Aviation History reference collections.