8vo. (Some toning and spotting to half-title, occasional minor spotting.) Original cloth (recased with free endpapers renewed, spine ends and extremities repaired); slipcase. Provenance: Melvill Jones (1887-1975), aeronautical engineer (presentation inscription). 

 

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY ORVILLE WRIGHT on half-title: “To Professor Melvill Jones / with my compliments and cordial regard. Orville Wright / May 5, 1943.”

 

Sir Bennett Melvill Jones was Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 1919 to 1952. He demonstrated the importance of streamlining in aircraft design, developing the ideas of Louis Charles Breguet into a refined theory to demonstrate emphatically the importance of drag to the performance of aircraft. A FINE ASSOCIATION COPY.