Today is the 75th anniversary of Lindberg's arrival in Paris. Perhaps more
amazing is that he accomplished this just 24 years after the Wright Brothers'
first flight.

Although the Spirit of St. Louis looks like a modern airplane, that
appearance is to a great degree deceiving. The Spirit was a transitional
evolutionary form, almost a perfect geometric mean between the Wright Flyer
and a Concorde. The Spirit of St. Louis was covered in the same kind of
stretched linen fabric as the kite-emulating planes that Wilbur and Orville
flew. The Spirit appears metallic only because of the doping that Ryan
Aircraft used was an aluminum-based pigment.

The true evolutionary novelty that allowed the Spirit the power and
reliability to fly the Atlantic was the air-cooled Wright radial engine. It
was simple enough to be extremely reliable (it's parts count was among the
lowest ever built), but also had the highest power-to-weight ratio of any
engine yet built at the time.

Although it's been 75 years since Lindberg's flight -- and it will be a
hundred years next year since the first flight -- it's almost unimaginable to
consider that only 66 years elapsed between Kitty Hawk and the Sea of
Tranquility, with the most important short stopover being Le Bourget, all
occurring well within the lifetime of an individual human being. We were able
to realize in the span of only slightly more than a half century humanity's
most persistent dream, one that is undoubtedly as old as humanity itself.

Wirt Atmar

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