Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the WorldPenguin, 2 Αυγ 2011 - 272 σελίδες The captivating story of the titans, engineers, and pilots who raced to design a safe and lucrative passenger jet. In Jet Age, journalist Sam Howe Verhovek explores the advent of the first generation of jet airliners and the people who designed, built, and flew them. The path to jet travel was triumphal and amazingly rapid-less than fifty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, Great Britain led the world with the first commercial jet plane service. Yet the pioneering British Comet was cursed with a tragic, mysterious flaw, and an upstart Seattle company put a new competitor in the sky: the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner. Jet Age vividly recreates the race between two nations, two global airlines, and two rival teams of brilliant engineers for bragging rights to the first jet service across the Atlantic Ocean in 1958. At the center of this story are great minds and courageous souls, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who spearheaded the development of the Comet, even as two of his sons lost their lives flying earlier models of his aircraft; Sir Arnold Hall, the brilliant British aerodynamicist tasked with uncovering the Comet's fatal flaw; Bill Allen, Boeing's deceptively mild-mannered president; and Alvin "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's swashbuckling but supremely skilled test pilot. The extraordinary airplanes themselves emerge as characters in the drama. As the Comet and the Boeing 707 go head-to-head, flying twice as fast and high as the propeller planes that preceded them, the book captures the electrifying spirit of an era: the Jet Age. In the spirit of Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, Verhovek's Jet Age offers a gorgeous rendering of an exciting age and fascinating technology that permanently changed our conception of distance and time, of a triumph of engineering and design, and of a company that took a huge gamble and won. |
Περιεχόμενα
two The Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner | 29 |
three Dreamers and Aviators | 37 |
seven The Race to Shrink the World | 179 |
Sources and Acknowledgments | 217 |
239 | |
Άλλες εκδόσεις - Προβολή όλων
Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World Sam Howe Verhovek Περιορισμένη προεπισκόπηση - 2010 |
Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World Sam Howe Verhovek Περιορισμένη προεπισκόπηση - 2011 |
Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World Sam Howe Verhovek Δεν υπάρχει διαθέσιμη προεπισκόπηση - 2010 |
Συχνά εμφανιζόμενοι όροι και φράσεις
aboard aerial aeronautics Air Lines Air Transport air travel aircraft Airport Airways aviation Bill Allen Bill Boeing BOAC Boeing Company Boeing's bomb British aviation build built called Captain carrier chief test pilot civilian cockpit commercial company's crash Cunningham disaster Douglas Elba feet flew flown flying fuselage Geoffrey de Havilland George Schairer German giant Hall Havilland Comet head Howard Hughes huge Hughes Jet Age jet airliner jet Comet jet engine jet transport jet travel jetliner Juan Trippe land later London looked machine manufacturers Messerschmitt Me 262 military Museum of Flight Nazi nearly never Ocean passengers pioneering plane president propeller prototype quickly race recalled reported routes runway Seattle Sir Geoffrey Sir Miles skies soon speed stewardess Stimpson Tex Johnston tion told took turned United United Air Lines Whittle wings wrote York