Authoritative and engaging, this popular history traces the science of aerodynamics from the age of Newton through the mid-twentieth century. Author Theodore von Karman, a well-known pioneer in aerodynamic research, addresses himself to readers acquainted with the facts of aviation but less familiar with the field's underlying theories.
A former director of the Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, von Karman founded the U.S. Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in 1933. In this volume, he employs straightforward, nontechnical language to recount the...