From My Experiences Concerning Aviation / Aus Meinen Erfahrungen Uber Das Flugwesen

No place, no date [ 1917]. First edition. Wrappers. Very Good. Octavo, 78 / 78 pages, brown printed wrappers with yapp edges with short tears

" The first time I saw an aeroplane fly was at Le Mans, France in the summer of 1908. Wilbur Wright had come over from America to make some demonstrations ...." McCormick relates his extended first meeting with Wright at LeMans, for his first and record-breaking flight in France. Soon thereafter, McCormick took his first flight at Dayton piloted by Frank [sic] Parmalee [surely Philip Orin Parmelee (d.1912) ], which is also described at length. McCormick was a scion of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the McCormick reaper. He succeeded his older brother, Cyrus, as Chairman of the Board of International Harvester, and married John D. Rockefeller's daughter. Princeton University, his alma mater, holds his Aviation archives. Altho not a pilot himself, McCormick was an early, passionate devotee to manned flight. This is evident in this wide-ranging, illustrated paen to aviation, which he presented to the Psychological Club in Zurich in mid-December 1917. This bi-lingual edition, with English and German on facing pages, has 156 pages, as opposed to the probably later English-only version printed circa 1918 in 67 pages in Zurich by the Art Institute Orell Fussli. McCormick organized the Aviation Meet at Chicago in 1912, when the Gordon Bennett Cup trophy was won by Jules Verdrines at 108.16 mph. In 1914, McCormick also owned the first privately owned plane in Chicagoland, and attempted to commute to work by Hydroplane from Lake Forest to Chicago.