title: Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention
author:  Peter L. Jakab 
description: Thoroughly researched and well written, this is a scholarly assessment of the engineering methods used by the Wright Brothers. Jakab documents the progression of their experiments to refine the wings, propulsion system, and control and balance designs that led to a flyable airplane. He underscores the Wrights' hard work and perseverence throughout. Tom D. Crouch's The Bishop's Boys ( LJ 5/15/89) is an excellent companion volume which relates the biographical side of this fascinating story.<BR><I>- William A. McIntyre, L.R.C., New Hampshire Technical Coll., Nashua</I><BR>Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: CHAPTER ONE
  ROCKET MEN
  CHAPTER TWO
  PROJEKT ‘NATTER’
  CHAPTER THREE
  LAUNCH
  CHAPTER FOUR
  ‘UNRESERVEDLY POSITIVE’
  CHAPTER FIVE
  KROKUS
  CHAPTER SIX
  WHAT IF?
  FURTHER READING
  
  CHAPTER ONE
  
  ROCKET MEN
  The ability for an aircraft to take off vertically (and quickly), offering the advantages of a small
  operational preparation space combined with speed of readiness, take-off and climb, has set a
  challenge to designers of flying machines and aviators since the 18th century. However, it was in
  Germany that significant thought was given to the challenge. In April 1925, for example, Jacob Emil
  Nöggerath of Berlin filed a patent for an ‘Aeroplane for Horizontal and Vertical Flight’. Nöggerath’s
  design envisaged a standard monoplane fuselage, but with the ability of the machine’s twin engines
  and propellers to pivot on their wings from the horizontal to the vertical, thus ‘converting’ it into a
  helicopter configuration with ‘vertical rising’ capability.
  Nöggerath believed that, ‘According to the present