Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

German Report on British Bombing Raid on Hydrierwek Scholven AG 1940

Allied Bombing and a Report on Damage to German Industry:

Fliegerangriff in der Nachct vom 17./18.8.40 auf die Hydrierwek Schloven AG. 

1940.  Fine condition.  With 27 original photographs displaying bombing damage 

**NOTE: Hdydrierwerk Scholven A.G. was a synthetic petroleum plant and was one of the earliest targets of the British in the Ruhr Valley. It was owned by the Hibernia Mining Company, as a hydrogenation plant in 1935. Gelsenkirchen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the Ruhr area.

Publication Data: no indication of author/printer or which agency/department was responsible, but this looks like (to me) to be the beginning of a standard protocol on reporting damage from British bombing raids. It seems as though the typing under the captions is first generation. This may be a unique copy or perhaps (at worst) one of several. I would say it was of extremely highly limited distribution.

Size: 11.5 x 8.5 inches. 20 leaves with 27 original photographic images of damage caused by the bombing. Each leave is quite thick—much more stiff and heavy than a 110-lb cover stock sheet. The photos are all 3 x 4.5 inches, and are clear and bright.

Condition: fine condition.

Provenance: ex-library, U.S. Library of Congress. This book was part of a very large collection of 90,000 pamphlets that we bought of the U.S. Library of Congress. Known simply as the “Pamphlet Collection” it is identified by a distinctive and tiny 3mm perforated stamp, plus a bookplate at the front pastedown.

Binding: bound in thick cloth boards.  $500.00

"Gelsenkirchen in the time of the Third Reich In the time when the Nazis held sway in Germany, Gelsenkirchen, owing to its location in the heart of the Ruhr area, was a centre of wartime industry. In no other time has Gelsenkirchen's industry been so highly productive. This brought about, on the one hand, after the massive job cuts in the 1920s, a short-term boost in mining and heavy-industry jobs. On the other hand, the city naturally became the target of many heavy Allied bombing raids during the Second World War, which destroyed three fourths of Gelsenkirchen. Even today, many old above-ground air-raid shelters can be found in the city, and some of the city's official buildings such as Hans-Sachs-Haus downtown and the town hall in Buer have air-raid shelters still kept more or less in their original form. Two synagogues in Gelsenkirchen were destroyed in the anti-Jewish riots of Kristallnacht in November 1938. The one in Buer was burnt down. The one in downtown Gelsenkirchen was likewise destroyed. Exactly 66 years later, the cornerstone was laid there for a new synagogue. The Institute for City History set up a documentation site: "Gelsenkirchen in National Socialist times". Throughout the time when Hitler was in power, from 1933 to 1945, the city's mayor was Carl Engelbert Böhmer, an NSDAP member..." 

Bell Helicopter--Erection and Maintenance Manual.  Niagra Falls, NY:  Bell Aircraft Corporation,  1948.  1st edition.  2 volumes: 265+39pp  4to.  Plasticized boards  Very good condition.  Scarce, hyper-illustrated and early treatment of the Bell helicopter. Comes with "Bell Aircraft Corporation Helicopter training School, Pilot's Outline" 1947, as well as an enormous, folding blueprint of the helicopter. Rare. $250

"Making Military Drawings While Flying on an Aeroplane: how the sketches were made in mid-air".  London:  Illustrated London News,  1911.  1st edition.  Folio.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  Very nice copy removed from larger bound volume 

This spectacular drawing is made from the viewpoint of the artist sitting directly behind the pilot of a Wright-style aeroplane. In the foreground we see the lap of the artist and his drawing pad as he sketches the terrain; the pilot's head takes up much of the center of the drawing, and in the background we see the distant horizon. Simply wonderful.   $125

Aero-photography,  "It's First Use under War Conditions--an Aeroplane on Scout Duty".  London:  Illustrated London News,  1911.  1st edition.  April 15, 1911, # 3756  Folio.  Wrappers.  Very good condition.  Slightly ex-library.  Weekly issue, removed from larger bound volume. 

This seems to be the first illustration of photography being used aboard an aeroplane under war (if not "battle") conditions on the frontier between the U.S. and Mexico near Laredo. The first images taken from an aeroplane seem to have done as early as late 1908 aboard a WIlbur Wright powered flight.   $125.00

Reissner,  Hans.  Jet Propulsion. A Systematic Analysis of Thermal Jet Propulsion. Written from January to October, 1945.  

1) original typed mimeographed sheets. 8vo, 36 leaves. In the original off-the-shelf binder, and titled in Reissner's hand. Dated October, 1945.  Stamped "Confidential".

2)  "Systematic Analysis of Thermal Jet Propulsion"   17 leaves (16 of text and 1 full-page illustration). Offset printed from typed originals.  Many mathematical notations in Reissner's hand.

This is an extremely early American  analysis of a working jet engine.  $950

Hans J. Reissner was a leading German pioneer in aeronautics and aeronautical engineering. He was appointed to the chair vacated by Arnold Sommerfeld at the Technische Hochschul at Aachen, where he established the aerodynamics laboratory. He also designed the great experimental wind tunnel at Aachen and was its second director (after T. von Karman). He went on to the University of Berlin where he remained until 1938, when he left Germany for the United States. Reissner held a chair at the Illinois Institute of Technology and in 1944 joined the faculty at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944. Van Karman spoke very highly of Reissner and attributed his work in aerodynamics to be as important as those advances made by Prandtl (see von Karman’s Wind and Beyond). Reissner was also celebrated with two anniversary volumes of Applied MAthematiics for his 60th and 75th birthdays (in 1934 and 1949).

The First Woman to Fly in an Airplane Was When?

ITEM:  issue of the Illustrated London News with the story/report of the first woman to fly in an airplane.  25 July 1908.  The story occupies about a half-page of the 32-page issue, which is removed from a larger bound volume, though intact.  Nice condition.  $125

I wondered about how long after the Wright's first powered flight (17 December 1903) that it took for a woman fly in an airplane, either as passenger or pilot.  I was a little surprised--when I found my answer, my glasses weren't quite up to seeing the date on the top of the page very clearly, and on closer inspection I was a little taken aback to see how wrong my assumption was.  It didn't take five weeks or five months, but five years before this happened.

It seems as though this honor belongs to Therese Peltier, who on 8 July 1908 was a passenger in the aircraft of her significant other, Leon Delagrance, flying a distance of about 700 feet¹.  An earlier great name for the history of women in aviation, E. Lillian Todd, was the first to design and build an airplane, though she was not able to fly the unflyable aircraft.  A half-dozen or so women aviators appear in 1909, and by 1910 the course for women in aviation expands dramatically. (An interesting chronology of "firsts" for women in aviation can be found here; another site, Women in Aviation Web Magazine, can be found here.)

The image above, from the Illustrated London News for 25 July 1908 (the original issue of which is available at our blog bookstore), shows Ms. Peltier getting ready for the flight.  It is interesting to note that the picture and story occurs in a section of the magazine called "Chronicle of the Car"

which is where reporting on aeroplanes and flight occurred, the subject not quite at the point where aviation deserved its own category.  Of course the automobile was new, then, too, so it makes a little sense to have them lumped together...but not much.  The "Chronicles" part of the magazine was a half-page affair, the last page before the advertisements began, the last leaf before the rear cover. 

Notes:

1.  It seems as though there is debate on this, mostly over the Delagrance aircraft was indeed "modern" enough to be considered a modern heavier-than-air airplane, this over the way the control of the plane was handled.  I'd say we just left Ms. Peltier alone on this one.

From the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum site

Military Balloons, 1889

Yon,  Gabriel. 

Aerostats et Aerostation Militaire a l'Exposition Universelle de 1889.  Paris:  E. Bernard et Cie,  1893.  1st edition.  Cloth.  Good condition. Ex-library.  Roy 8vo, 52pp, large folding chart (12x25”) featuring the cross section and plan of a large transportable balloon. Original printed wrappers, all rebound in the cloth and marbled boards style adopted for the Langley deposit.

Provenance: The Library of Congress, via the Smithsonian Institution Collection and the Samuel Pierpont Langley Aeronautical Library (carrying the acquisition date of 1929). $250

Rare Material on the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, 1964

OGO--Orbiting Geophysical Observatory Materials, Manuscript, Blueprints, etc.

Published by TRW and various, 1962-1964.

Includes: "Final Report, Investigation of OGO-A Malfunction, Vol 1, Technical Considerations." TRW, 1964. 4 parts, 75pp. PLUS "OGO Structure Subsytem Design Criteria", offset mimeo sheets, with folding blueprints, photos etc etc.

***From Astronautica.com: "The OGO--Orbiting Geophysical Laboratory--Class: Earth. Type: Magnetosphere. Nation: USA. Agency: NASA. The purpose of the six Orbiting Geophysical Observatories was to conduct diversified geophysical experiments to obtain a better understanding of the earth as a planet and to develop and operate a standardized observatory-type satellite. OGO consisted of a main body, two solar panels, each with a solar-oriented experiment package (SOEP), two orbital plane experiment packages (OPEP) and six appendages, EP-1 through EP-6, supporting the boom experiment packages. The main body of the spacecraft was attitude controlled by means of horizon scanners and gas jets so that its orientation was maintained constant with respect to the earth and the sun. The solar panels rotated on a horizontal axis extending transversely through the main body of the spacecraft. The rotation of the panels was activated by sun sensors so that the panels received maximum sunlight. Seven experiments were mounted on the solar panels (the SOEP package). An additional axis, oriented vertically across the front of the main body, carried seven experiments (the OPEP package). Nominally, these sensors observed in a forward direction in the orbital plane of the satellite. The sensors could be rotated more than 90 deg relative to the nominal observing position and more than 90 deg between the upper and lower OPEP groups mounted on either end of this axis." $500.00

Bell Helicopter Internal Documents, 1948

Bell Helicopter--Erection and Maintenance Manual.  Niagra Falls, NY:  Bell Aircraft Corporation,  1948.  1st edition.  2 volumes: 265+39pp  4to.  Plasticized boards  Very good condition.  Scarce, hyper-illustrated and early treatment of the Bell helicopter. Comes with "Bell Aircraft Corporation Helicopter training School, Pilot's Outline" 1947.  $400.00

Early Technical Aviation--1890

[A. Ritter v. Miller-Hauenfels.] Der mühelose Segelflug der Vögel und die segelnde Luftschiffahrt als Endziel hundertjährigen Strebens.  Vortrag gehalten am 18. Januar 1890 im Polytechnischen Club in Graz  von A. Ritter v. Miller-Hauenfels ...

Published in Wien by Spielhagen & Schurich, 1890.    9x6 inches, 66pp.  Original printed wrappers with more modern string binding.  Nice copy, formerly the copy of Viktor Silberer and then of the Library of Congress. Good, strong copy.  Scarce.  $175

In his lectures at Graz Miller-Hauenfels looks at the possibility of human (non-powered, gliding) flight via forward-progression bird flight, basing his work on that of Marey, Lilienthal and Parseval.

Full text here.   Review of the work here: