Cart 0
The Genesis of Flight: The Aeronautical History Collection of Colonel Richard Gimbel Hardcover – January 1, 2000 by Richard Gimbel (Author)

The Genesis of Flight: The Aeronautical History Collection of Colonel Richard Gimbel Hardcover – January 1, 2000 by Richard Gimbel (Author)

Tax included.

ISBN: 9780295978116

Univ of Washington Pr, First Edition (January 1, 2000)

Hardcover, 372 pages

Displays the 20,000 item collection of Colonel Richard Gimbel on the history of flight. After retiring from the U.S. Air Force, Gimbel became Curator of Aeronautical Literature at Yale where he continued building his collection, eventually donated to the US Air Force Academy in 1970. Five thousand year-old seals carved from semi-precious stones and used to inscribe clay tablets record some of the earliest known instances of the dream of flight. Of thousands of books, some date from the 15th century, some are scientific like Robert Hooke's Philosophical Collections (1682), and others are about imaginary voyages into space and other worlds, including Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1547), Cyrano de Bergerac's account of a voyage to the moon (1651), and the 19th-century classics of Jules Verne. There also some 2,000 prints, portraits, woodcuts, and lithographs, and letters and hundreds of commemorative medallions, sheet music, posters, dime novels, postcards, postage stamps, early flight manuals, catalog of aircraft equipment, match boxes, and children's games and toys.