The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation

Middleton, Edgar Charles, 1894-1939Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
215K words
Chapters
22

Tags

English Originals Industrial Technology Technical EvolutionTech DevelopmentAerial VoyageAviation DevelopmentAviation HistoryAviationFlying MachineFlight ExplorationFlight DreamAge of Flight

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation by Edgar Charles MiddletonAuthor: Middleton, Edgar Charles, 1894-1939,Language: English, Class: D501: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: World War I (1914-1918), Release Date: Mar 28, 2016

Editor's review

This book is a popular introduction to aviation written by Edgar Charles Middleton in the early twentieth century, a primary popular text of early aviation history and of technical observation around the First World War. Its value lies not in a systematic manual of technical specifications but in showing how people of the time understood the new phenomenon of flight: from plain explanations of aircraft construction and the principles of flight to the roles aviation might play in military and civil life, all bearing the distinctive tone and cognitive limits of its era. For today's readers, half the pleasure of reading comes from knowledge and half from the 'historical perspective'—watching how an author a century ago predicted, marveled, and described with a limited vocabulary concepts that now seem elementary. The free electronic edition from Project Gutenberg is convenient for searching and excerpting, and suits use as supplementary material for aviation history, history of technology, or English popular-science reading. Note that the book's views and data remain those of its time of composition and it should not be treated as a contemporary aviation primer.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and the opening paragraphs of chapters first to grasp the book's scope, then choose chapters on aircraft or military applications that interest you for close reading.
  2. Prepare a Chinese-English glossary of aviation terms and note old-fashioned expressions as you go, so you do not give up because of unfamiliar terminology.
  3. Read the book's judgments against today's common aviation knowledge, marking which predictions came true and which were rewritten by technological development.
  4. If you are only verifying historical sources, prioritize passages related to First World War aviation and cross-check them against other works on aviation history.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22

FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introductory textbook on modern aviation? No. It was written in the early twentieth century and describes the aviation knowledge and技术水平 of that time; many concepts and data are outdated. It is better suited as supplementary reading in aviation history or the social history of technology, for observing how early aviation was understood and imagined, rather than for learning modern principles of flight.
Is the original English difficult to read? As an early popular-science book aimed at a general audience, its sentence structures are generally not very difficult, but it involves old-fashioned aviation terms and period background. It is advisable to read with the help of a dictionary and materials on aviation history; when you encounter unfamiliar aircraft types or organization names, do not struggle over every word—grasp the main idea of the paragraph first.
What are the practical features of the Project Gutenberg edition? This edition is a free e-book, convenient for downloading, searching, and excerpting, and suitable for topic-based skimming or source verification. However, electronic editions usually lack modern editorial notes, so readers must supply historical background themselves; when citing, you should also check the page or paragraph location in the original text.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Middleton, Edgar Charles, 1894-1939 Author · British · 1894–1939

Edgar Charles Middleton (1894–1939) was a British journalist and writer. Public information about his life is limited; what is known is that he was active in the early twentieth century and wrote on aviation, travel, and documentary subjects. One of his works is held in this collection, The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation, which introduces modern aviation to general readers and reflects his approach of turning specialist knowledge into accessible narrative. The available information suggests that his writing emphasizes the recording and explanation of real experience, combining reportage with informative exposition, and may be of interest to readers concerned with early aviation history and the travel documentary writing of his time.