Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

"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:

The Display of Information: How Many Planes does a Dreadnought Buy? (1911)

Item:  large (14x11) inch single page illustration fro The Illustrated London News for 1911.  $55.00    ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1408

There's nothing quite so satisfying as seeing a representation of quantitative data like this where the graphical displays are flying.  "One Dreadnought Buys 52 Dirigibles and 235 Aeroplanes" is a full-page diagram appearing in the 3 June 1911 , making a very strong point that in the new air-age 2 million pounds for one battleship buys a lot of aircraft.  Of course this is a British journal and the ship is flying an American flag--the image originally appeared in the Scientific American just a short while before this publication, and so it also enumerates American and international aircraft, making for a lovely representation of a broad range of airplanes filling up the same sky. 

Balloons and the Defense of London, 1938

ITEM:   weekly issue of the Illustrated London News, as described below.  Cover art illustrates a pictorial two-page spread on the balloon defenses of London.  Very nice copy, removed from larger bound volume.  $75

This series of drawings, published in the Illustrated London News 22 January 1938,  by the incredibly prolific and detail-oriented G.H. Davies depicts one segment of the city defense program being formulated by the British government in the last year  or so leading up to the beginning of the European end of World War Two. (I own 150 or so of these images by Davies--he never fails to provide the detail where you need it.)   The overall plan for defending major British cities consisted of anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, R.A.F. fighter squadrons and interceptors, and the "Balloon Barrage".  London and suburbs are featured here, all to be protected by a series of ten squadrons of fifty balloons each, handled by a crew of ten.  The thinking was that it would make low-level bombing by fighter aircraft impracticable, and force any aircraft attempting such an approach to a higher altitude where they would be theoretically susceptible to the interceptor squadrons. 

I'm not terribly sure why the thinking was against low altitude attack, but my best guess is that the planners were thinking about the He-111Bs and Ju52s or other such aircraft that the Nazis checked and tested out against the Spanish Republicans during the Civil War. Perhaps freshest of all memories of the German operation Feuerzauber (Magic Fire) was the Guernica raid, just a year or so before the publication of these images, where that militarily insignificant town was attacked from the air in twenty minute intervals over three hours, destroying it in a terror blitz.  If I was sitting around a big table at 10 Downing, I’d have that picture in my head.  .

Be that as it may, the "air mine field" looks terribly inefficient and vulnerable to me, sort of like an exposed Maginot Defense Line, but without the very deep misunderstandings that went along with the highly questionable French effort. 

Explanation of the Images:

a)    The first image shows the incredible perimeter defense network, which extended ten miles around St. Paul’s; the balloons were moored at 100 yard intervals, making for 1100 or so balloons to “fence” the perimeter.
b) The second image shows  London center and immediate suburbs, with another 500 balloons in a smaller circle inscribed in the larger.
c)  The third image  is a close-up of the balloons, looking down;  seems as though they were tethered at about 2000 feet or so
d)  The last image is a close-up of London center.