Tom D. Crouch
Contributor
Website : Tom Crouch at the Smithsonian
Curator Emeritus, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Author of The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright and many others.
Primary Contributions (39)
In the history of flight, the most important landmarks and events include an understanding of the dynamic reaction of lifting surfaces (or wings), building absolutely reliable engines that produce sufficient power to propel an airframe, and solving the problem of flight control in three dimensions.…
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Publications (3)
the-bishops-boys (2003)
The reissue of this definitive biography heralds the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight. Publishers Weekly Milton Wright, father of Wilbur and Orville, was an itinerant churchman embroiled in controversies who bequeathed to his sons firmness of purpose, stubborn independence and overweening pride, qualities that were to inform their lives. After the bachelor brothers perfected the world's first practical airplane, their extreme secretiveness and haughty...
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Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age
"A superb history of flying machines . . . the best one-volume analysis of the subject."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Publishers Weekly National Air and Space Museum curator Crouch (A Dream of Wings; The Bishop's Boys) exuberantly surveys the entirety of aviation history. Wealthy aristocrat George Cayley progressed from a helicopter toy (1796) and model gliders (1804) to a glider capable of lifting a human (1849). After Cayley came a parade of pioneers, including...
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Lighter Than Air: An Illustrated History of Balloons and Airships
This richly illustrated book chronicles lighter-than-air flight from Archimedes' discovery of the principle of buoyancy to the latest in sport balloons and plans for future airships. Far more than a timeline of events, Lighter Than Air focuses on the people — flamboyant and daring, heroes and scoundrels — who made history in the sky. Here are the eighteenth-century pioneers who first took to the skies, the peripatetic aeronauts who criss-crossed two continents a century later, the...
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