Word: bonney
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...jealous of the birds, though he has already learned to fly many times faster. Determined to learn their secret, Leonard W. Bonney, wealthy pioneer of the air, grown middle-aged since his first flight with Orville Wright in 1910, caught two seagulls in a steel trap padded with cloth at Mastic, L. I. For three years he studied them, scrutinizing every feather on their bodies...
Finally, he designed a plane. Inspired by the gull, it looked like the gull. It was named Bonney's Gull. It was fat in body with graceful curving wings. Bonney followed the bird principle, abandoned the aileron, or balancing contrivance which airplane designers have always considered an essential feature of stability in the air. His plane had new features: an expanding and contracting tail, like a blackbird's, for varying loads; variable camber in the wings, so that they could flatten out like a gull's when flying level; a varying angle of incidence to its wings...
Last week, at Curtiss Field, Long Island, Bonney tested his finally completed Gull. It flew. For half a mile it traveled in a burst of speed. Bonney waved his arm in triumph. And then the Gull nosed down to earth and dived straight into the ground, a mass of wreckage. Bonney landed on his head 20 feet away, with only moments left to live...
Died. Leonard W. Bonney, 42, airplane designer; near Curtiss Field...
...BONNEY FAMILY?Ruth Suckow? Knopf ($2.50). There are two old Bonneys, four little Bonneys?Warren, Sarah, Wilma & Wilfred. Mr. Bonney, a country clergyman, moves from the humble but well-beloved village of Morning Sun to a college town so that his children may have the advantage of college education. When this has had its effect, redheaded, eccentric Warren is a well-tamed professor; Sarah is a kind, sensible, placid young spinster; Wilma is married and faraway; Wilfred, who had especially liked rabbits or other animals, is dead in France. Wise Mrs. Bonney is dead too, and foolish, likable Mr. Bonney...