On Saturday, August 13, “Locomotive to Aeromotive” will officially debut near the shore and dunes of Millers, an eastern suburb of Gary, Indiana. This biography of Octave Chanute was written by aviation historian and researcher Simine Short, whose specialty is motorless flight. The location is the restored Gary Bathing Beach House, also called the Aquatorium, at Marquette Beach. The theme of this year’s Annual Meeting of the Chanute Aquatorium Society is “Hanging with Chanute”.
This event will mark the one hundred-and-fifteenth aniversary of Chanute and his team testing and flying gliders on the beach’s 60-80 foot tall dunes, located about 1,000 feet to the west of the Aquatorium. The most successful of the various gliders tested during that summer was the biplane glider, a design that provided many want-to-be-aeronauts a good and safe starting point for their experiments.
Chanute's 1896 biplane-Library of Congress (click to enlarge)
The National Soaring Museum and the Chicagoland Glider Council celebrated the 100th anniversary in 1996 by dedicating the area as a National Landmark of Soaring. Two Chanute-type replicas were built and flown at that time (Photo Ed Stokes).
1996 replicas of Chanute's 1896 biplane, built by Paul Dees (LH) and Kevin Kochersberger and his RIT students (RH) - Photo by Ed Stokes (click to enlarge)
On August 13, during the evening book signing, the author will briefly discuss the life and career of Octave Chanute and his contributions to the transportation revolution in the 19th century, as well as his contributions in the quest for mechanical flight.
For information on Simine’s book “Locomotive to Aeromotive, Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution”, please check the publisher’s website:
<http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/56shm7qa9780252036316.html>
or take a look at the site, prepared by Paul Remde of Cumulus Soaring:
<http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/books/Short/LocomotiveToAeromotive.htm>.
1 comment for “Chanute Biography Debut”