Lilienthal, Otto (1848-1896) Der Vogelflug.

Description:

Lilienthal, Otto (1848-1896) Der Vogelflug. Berlin: Gaertners, 1889.
First edition, illustrated with colored frontispiece of birds flying, text illustrations, and eight folding tables in the back; in very good blind and gold-stamped publisher's brown cloth, ex libris Greeley Stevenson Curtis (1871-1947) with his signature on ffep and notes in the text, with an off-print of an article by Lilienthal presented to Greeley, from the Journal for Airship Flight & Atmospheric Physics, February/March, 1895; and a German stamp featuring Lilienthal, 9 1/4 x 6 in.
An early practitioner of gliding flight, Lilienthal pioneered a hang glider design that allowed him to make sustained flights lasting as long as five hours from jumping-off places around Berlin. A fellow enthusiast, Harvard graduate Greeley visited Lilienthal and glided with him in Germany. Lilienthal's valuable experiments were cut short when he crashed while gliding and sustained a serious cervical break that ended his life prematurely at the age of forty-eight.
Estimate $2,000-3,000


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