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The airplane ranks as one of history's most ingenious and phenomenal inventions. It has surely been one of the most world changing. How ideas about aerodynamics first came together and how the science and technology evolved to forge the airplane into the revolutionary machine that it became is the epic story told in this six-volume series, The Wind and Beyond: A Documentary Journey through the History of Aerodynamics in America. This first volume covers the impact of aerodynamic development on the evolution of the airplane in America. Volume II explores the airplane design revolution of the 1920s and 1930s and the quest for improved airfoils. Subsequent volumes cover the aerodynamics of airships, flying boats, rotary-wing aircraft, breaking the sound barrier, and more.

This first volume, plus the succeeding five now in preparation, covers the impact of aerodynamic development on the evolution of the airplane in America. As the six-volume series will ultimately demonstrate, just as the airplane is a defining technology of the twentieth century, aerodynamics has been the defining element of the airplane. Volumes two through six will proceed in roughly chronological order, covering such developments as the biplane, the advent of commercial airliners, flying boats, rotary aircraft, supersonic flight, and hypersonic flight. This series is designed as an aeronautics companion to the Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (NASA SP-4407) series of books. As with Exploring the Unknown, the documents collected during this research project were assembled from a diverse number of public and private sources. A major repository of primary source materials relative to the history of the civil space program is the NASA Historical Reference Collection in the NASA Headquarters History Office. Historical materials housed at NASA field centers, academic institutions, and Presidential libraries were other sources of documents considered for inclusion, as were papers in the archives of private individuals and corporations. SP-2003-4409