EVEN before the first aeroplanes were
-flying, Mr. Harry Harper was building man-lifting kites and gliders, and making balloon trips with pioneer aeronauts.
Then, when in 1906 Lord Northcliffe appointed him Air Reporter No. 1, he began his life's work in studying and recording the progress of aviation, and in describing the historic feats and flights of Wilbur Wright, Santos-Dumont, Bleriot, Cody, and others of the famous pioneers.
It is from the viewpoint of a personal eye-witness that he has been able to watch, stage by stage, the unfolding of this great saga of the air, and in this book of reminiscence, covering every phase of his life in the world of flight, he paints vivid pen-pictures of all the outstanding events and personalities in an amazing half-century in which he has seen kites and balloons followed by airships and aeroplanes, and piston-engined'planes by distance-devouring jets and rockets, and with the construction already now in hand of the first of those earth satellites which will pave the way for the greatest triumph of all-man's exploration of outer space.