COPYRIGHT 1936
BY
EMIL BRUECHIG

The history of the flying machine reaches back asfar as the earliest of man’s written records of his thoughtsand ambitions. And one can only surmise how longago it must have been, in the dim unchronicled past,when the idea of human flight first suggested itself toour ancestors.

¶ The ancient mythology of the Greeks reveals an interestin this problem. The philosophers who lived when Romewas ruler of the world, and the alchemists of the middleages have left time-stained parchments of their thoughtsand theories about artificial flight.

¶ And even today, after centuries of trial and error havebrought an intangible dream to a streamlined actuality,the glamour and marvel of aviation still grips the minds ofmen. Hardly any device which humanity has fashionedhas taken so lengthy a time to accomplish and, afterbeing achieved, has been able to hold its place in the sun—inwar and in peace.

¶ For it was war that brought the rapid development ofthe airplane into a machine that is serving man so capablyas a peace-time vehicle. Bringing serum to the criticallyill; winging food to flooded and snow-bound areas; transportingpeople over thousands of miles in a single day;and speeding up the wheels of commerce with its mailcarriers; these are but a few of the almost magical featswhich aviation has made possible.

¶ And, better than volumes of words could describe, onewill find this vast panorama of man’s struggle for masteryover the air pictured in glowing colors and realistic sceneson the hundreds of air mail stamps which have been issuedby almost all countries of the world.

¶ There is a tale of danger and daring behind each squareof tinted paper, a pulse-quickening story of crossingfever-ridden jungles, battling treacherous, snow-cladmountain peaks, and risking the mocking death of desertwastes.

¶ It takes no great stretch of the imagination to visualizethe magnitude and grace of the Zeppelins as pictured onthe German air mail stamps. From afar, one seems tohear the deep-throated roar of the great engines and thewhistle of the wind as it strums along the wires. Thegreat “Graf,” air-traveler supreme, is flying before youreyes!

¶ One needs no trip to the Mediterranean to see the blueof its waters and the gold of its sun. The Grecian issue2with an indescribable delicacy of line and color suffices.The ruins of the Acropolis, perched on their hilly site,before a background of cloud-studded skies, seem buta step away.

¶ But to single out stamps here and there does not dofull justice to this theme—the myriad perfection of airmail stamps as a pictorial record of a great triumph mustbe viewed in a more methodical manner, and more broadly,as a grand mural of many events.

¶ Beginning with the fabulous flight of Daedalus and hisson Icarus, on wings made of wax and feathers, we canfollow the story of aviation on air mail stamps. Wesee the Roman philosopher, Virgil, on an Italian adhesive,gazing at a gliding eagle and remarking prophetically,“I assign limits neither to the extent nor the duratio

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!