Excerpt from Sky High: The Story of Aviation Our indebtednesses are few but deep. To Mr. Edward Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly Press and Mr. Theodore Morrison of the Atlantic Monthly we owe the original idea from which this book stemmed. Professor William N. Seaver, Librarian, and Mrs. Katherine Maynard, Vail Librarian, of Massachu setts Institute of Technology, graciously threw open the Treasure Room of the Library, which yielded information on the obscure early days of aviation and aerostation. We cannot be sufficiently grateful to Mr. Edward P. Warner, the first holder of the portfolio of Assistant Secretary Of the Navy for Aeronautics, and now Editor of Aviation, who read the proofs with painstaking care. TO Mr. Carl H. Claudy of Washington, D. C., we owe a debt as great for the thorough ness with which be examined the proof for every type of error which an author can make. And without the supersecretarial services of Mrs. Harriet Rodgers this book could not have been written at all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.