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  3. Cambridge Centennial of Flight

This series of books will improve our understanding of the remarkable progression - from wood and fabric machines to modern streamlined jets, to the latest aerospace technology - and its wide and varied impact on technology, science, and society in the twentieth century. The series showcases new scholarship on the evolution of flight technology, broadly considered. The editors welcome fresh approaches to significant themes and personalities in the history of aerospace technology. Titles in the series will reflect broad themes and specific topics of interest to a wider audience keenly interested in the history of flight.

  • General Editors: John Anderson, Smithsonian Institution Air Space Museum, Von Hardesty, Smithsonian Institution Air Space Museum

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3 results in Cambridge Centennial of Flight

The Grand Designers
  • The Evolution of the Airplane in the 20th Century
  • John D. Anderson Jr
  • Published online:
    27 April 2018
    Print publication:
    22 March 2018
  • The airplane has experienced phenomenal advancement in the twentieth century, changing at an exponential rate from the Wright brothers to the present day. In this ground breaking work based on new research, Dr John D. Anderson, Jr, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, analyzes the historical development of the conceptual design process of the airplane. He aims to answer the question of whether airplane advancement has been driven by a parallel advancement in the intellectual methodology of conceptual airplane design. In doing so, Anderson identifies and examines six case histories of 'grand designers' in this field, and challenges some of the preconceived notions of how the intellectual methodology of conceptual airplane design advanced. Filled with over one hundred illustrations which bring his words to life, Anderson unfolds the lives and thoughts of these grand designers.

Reinventing the Propeller
  • Aeronautical Specialty and the Triumph of the Modern Airplane
  • Jeremy R. Kinney
  • Published online:
    20 April 2017
    Print publication:
    24 March 2017
  • An international community of specialists reinvented the propeller during the Aeronautical Revolution, a vibrant period of innovation in North America and Europe from World War I to the end of World War II. They experienced both success and failure as they created competing designs that enabled increasingly sophisticated and 'modern' commercial and military aircraft to climb quicker and cruise faster using less power. Reinventing the Propeller nimbly moves from the minds of these inventors to their drawing boards, workshops, research and development facilities, and factories, and then shows us how their work performed in the air, both commercially and militarily. Reinventing the Propeller documents this story of a forgotten technology to reveal new perspectives on engineering, research and development, design, and the multi-layered social, cultural, financial, commercial, industrial, and military infrastructure of aviation.

Camera Aloft
  • Edward Steichen in the Great War
  • Von Hardesty
  • Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    02 December 2015
  • Edward Steichen (1879–1973) played a key role in the development of photography in the twentieth century. He is well known for his varied career as an artist, a celebrated photographer and a museum curator. However, Steichen is less known for his pivotal role in shaping America's first experiments in aerial photography as a tool for intelligence gathering in what may be called his 'lost years'. In Camera Aloft, Von Hardesty tells how Steichen volunteered in 1917 to serve in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). He rose rapidly in the ranks of the Air Service, emerging as Chief of Air Photography during the dramatic final offensives of the war. His photo sections were responsible for the rapid processing of aerial images gained through the daily and hazardous sorties over the front and in the enemy rear areas. What emerged in the eighteen months of his active service was a new template for modern aerial reconnaissance. The aerial camera, as with new weapons such as the machine gun, the tank and the airplane, profoundly transformed modern warfare.