so I guess we have Lindberg and the Wright Brothers to thank for all this
global warming.

At 12:57 PM 5/21/2002, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>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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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
949-713-3276

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