The Jet Age

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 641 well qualified him to undertake and to produce a book such as this. Its format could well serve as a guide for similar histories for any pro­ fessional scientific or technological society. Mitchell R. Sharpe* The Jet Age: Forty Years ofJet Aviation. Edited by Walter J. Boyne and Donald S. Lopez. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. Pp. vii+190; illustrated. $17.50 (cloth); $7.95 (paper). Wings oj Gold: How the Aeroplane Developed New Guinea. By James Sinclair. Sydney: Pacific Publications, 1980 (distributed in the United States by Books Australia, Trumbull, Connecticut). Pp. 326; illustrations. $37.95. The Jet Age consists of the proceedings of a symposium of lectures given at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum on October 26, 1979, the lecturers being seven men who were salient figures in some important aspect of the development of the jet engine, the jet airplane, or both. The lectures marked the fortieth anniversary (although not to the day) of the first flight of the Heinkel He. 178, the world’s first jet airplane. The lecturers are Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the turbojet in Great Britain and generally conceded to have been its original world pioneer; Hans von Ohain, who designed the engine for the He. 178 in Germany; Anselm Franz, formerly of the Junkers Company and de­ signer of the Jumo 004, the world’s first axial flow engine; Gerhard Neuman of General Electric’s Flight Propulsion Division; Charles E. Yeager, test pilot of the Bell XS-1 and the first person to fly beyond the speed of sound; Najeeb E. Hallaby, former Navy test pilot, ad­ ministrator of the Federal Aviation Administration during the years when jet airliners began to fill the airways, and most recently chief executive of Pan American Airways; and John E. Steiner, vice pres­ ident of the Boeing Company and who managed the production of the 707, 727, and 737 airliners. Given the stellar quality of the lecturers, each an outstanding pri­ mary source in his own area of expertise, the book constitutes a gold mine of useful information. It is difficult to imagine why two persons were required ostensibly to edit the work of this all star cast. The book is lavishly illustrated. The lecture texts alone are served by more than sixty pertinent photos, thirty drawings, and thirty-five items with graph data. Apart from the main texts there are three signatures with eighty-some photos ofjet fighters, bombers, and airliners, which are nice but not necessary; it may be assumed that they were included to *Dr. Sharpe is the historian of the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. An annual contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica yearbooks, he has written several books and many articles on the history of aerospace science and technology. 642 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE flesh out what would otherwise have been a thin book and to enhance its eye appeal for sales to the general public. The book is topped off by an excellent select bibliography and research guide by Dominic Pisano, the museum’s librarian. Its six pages include references not only to printed material but also to sources of photographs and to motion pictures. In sum, the softcover edition constitutes a best buy for anyone with an interest in jet aircraft per se; taken as a whole, this is an excellent collection of primary source material for the shelves of any reference library. There are few places in the world during the interwar years where the technology of aviation could stand in such stark contrast to the local culture than in New Guinea, a land in which headhunting was very much a part of the ordinary ways of life. In spite of what its subtitle may suggest, Sinclair’s Wings ofGold does not provide a sterile analysis devoid of people and the stuff of three dimensions; instead we have here a marvelous chronicle of aviation in New Guinea during 1919-42. It is more than satisfying that this is an outstanding product because nowhere else in the world during the 1930s was the airplane employed so intensively to such extraordinary ends. Remarkably enough, this book is

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