Word: runway
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Other designers have used toboggan slides and umbrellas, massed lines, moving lines of busses and cars. Artist John Held Jr. has done a jazz band-round bald heads, heads with sparse hair, their owners blowing saxophones or beating drums. Sil-houet prints contrast the curves of a roller-coaster runway with the straight lines of tall supports. The emphasis in the toboggan cars suggests a pattern of the Orient rather than Coney Island. So called "message prints" (letters of various sizes & colors printed on a lighter background) spell out such words as "It," "Cheerio" & "Je t'aime." Ticker tape...
...Bourget flying field, near Paris, ventured Charles A. Levine, stubby, irascible transatlantic flyer. There he bade mechanics start the motor of his plane, the Columbia. When they obeyed, thinking he wished to taxi about the field for amusement, Charles A. Levine got in all by himself, reared along the runway, tilted the wings, jolted clumsily into the air, swooped dangerously over the airdrome, then set out over the Channel for England...
...spoke Charles H. Babb, Secretary of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Aeronautic Association: "Clarke never signed an agreement to postpone his start." The gasoline gauge rose. Flyers and officials crowded around. The plane was wheeled to the runway. Mr. Clarke leaned out, called: "As long as I can't see the start of this race I'll be at the other end to see the finish!" Into the plane jumped Mr. Babb, hatless in business clothes. The motor hummed; the plane took off. A Dole official told the crowd Mr. Clarke had not qualified, had not a chance...
...entered the cockpit. At 7:52 a. m. he was roaring down the runway, his plane lurching on the soft spots of the wet ground. Out of the safety zone, he hit a bump, bounced into the air, quickly returned to earth. Disaster seemed imminent; a tractor and a gully were ahead. Then his plane took the air, cleared the tractor, the gully; cleared some telephone wires. Five hundred onlookers believed they had witnessed a miracle. It was a miracle of skill...
Getting a plane off the ground is not dangerous except when carrying a close-to-maximum load. A light plane may need only a 100-yard runway. Planes are usually launched against the wind, at a speed between 50 and 90 miles per hour, depending on their weight. The pilot watches his tachometre to make sure that the engine is making a sufficient number of revolutions per minute.* Then he pushes the joy stick forward slightly to get the plane's tail skid off the ground, pulls it backward and the plane rises. Green pilots sometimes try to elevate...