THADDEUS LOWE : AMERICA'S ONE - MAN AIR CORPS

This rare and unusual book, which is of great interest to any American Civil War enthusiast, will tell you the story Thaddeus Lowe, who became famous with its balloon during the American Civil War ( 1861 - 1865 ).

Aviation book
Flamboyant showman, starry - eyed dreamer, dedicated scientist, Thaddeus Lowe with his billowing balloon can justly be called the Founding Father of the United States Air Force, because of the balloon equipment and aerial reconnaissance techniques he developed during the Civil War.
A self - taught cobbler's son from New Hampshire, Lowe was interested in the science of flight and one of his boyhood experiments was a plan to send a huge kite aloft with a cat in it to test its reaction in altitude. He became fascinated by balloons and at twenty - two was a carnival balloonist taking passengers aloft at so much a head. A student of wind currents and gases, he made elaborate plans to fly a balloon across the Atlantic and was making a test over land, coming down for fuel in South Carolina, just as the Civil War broke out. Because of his very apparent Yankee accent and his trange paraphernalia, he was nearly hanged on the spot as a spy.
He offerd his services to the Union Army and despite the skepticism of the generals about military balloons, Lowe gave a demonstration for President Lincoln. He even went so far to relay the first message by telegraph from aloft. Lincoln was so excited about the ballonn that he had its base installed on the White House lawn. In August of 1861 Lowe received the go - ahead to construct the first official military balloon for the U.S. Army.
( ... ) For two years Thaddeus Lowe's balloons directed artillery, reported troop movements, revolutionized the science of gunnery through aerial reports.
( ... ) But ill - luck struck when the Rebels were victorious at Chancellorsville, despite Lowe's accurate dispatches from his balloon perch. Discouraged by lack of recognition and sickened by the wholesale slaughter, the ’ most - shot - at - man ’ in the Civil War returned to his research and inventions,... ( ... ) When he died in 1913, at the age of 81, Thaddeus Lowe was at work on a giant telescope, still seeking further understanding of the universal heavens.

Mary Eugenie Duprey ( December 8th, 1914 - December 7th, 2004 ) was born at Worcester ( Massachusetts, United States ). She attended public and private schools in Worcester and Noroton ( Connecticut ), Erskine Junior College in Boston and two years at Wheaton College in Norton ( Massachusetts ).
She had planned to attend the Sorbonne in Paris ( France ) as an exchange student during her junior year, but she left college to marry the writer and military historian Adolph August Hoehling ( 1914 - 2004 ), and settled in Washington, D.C. They have lived in various places : Corpus Christi ( Texas ), Lakehurst ( New Jersey ), Chicago ( Illinois ), Denver ( Colorado ) and New York City ( New York ).
Over the years, she tried several careers, including writing and performing for a puppet theater in Connecticut during the early 1950's, and working as a real estate agent in the 1970's. However, Mary Hoehling is best known for writing history books inspired by her desire to make history interesting for her children and other young readers. Among these books are two written with her husband : The Last Voyage of the Lusitania ( 1956 ) and The Day Richmond Died ; or, The Last Days of Richmond as the Capital of the Confederacy ( 1980 ). Interested in the people behind history, she also wrote such work as Yankee in the White House : John Quincy Adams ( 1963 ).
Mary Hoehling died of a stroke in Venice ( Florida ), just one day before her 90th birthday.
( sources : THADDEUS LOWE : AMERICA'S ONE - MAN AIR CORPS, encyclopedia.com, snaccooperative.org )