On Miniature Wings : Model Aircraft of the National Air and Space Museum Book

Fourteen years before the Wright brothers' famous 1903 flight, Samuel P. Langley, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, acquired a model of John Stringfellow's triplane and began the museum's model aircraft collection. Over the years, the museum's curators and modelers worked to develop what has become one of the finest collections of model aircraft and spacecraft in the world, exhibited today in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. On Miniature Wings will take you on a guided tour of some of the collection's highlights, from the simple wooden flying toys of the nineteenth century to a recent ten-foot model of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise, which took its modeler more than a decade to complete. Lavishly illustrated with over 150 full color photographs, this book offers a fact-filled introduction to the marvelous miniature world of aeromodeling.
About the Author

A lifelong aviation enthusiast and modeler, Tom Dietz joined the staff of the National Air and Space Museum's Aeronautics Department in 1987, as part of the curatorial team for Legend, Memory, and the Great War in the Air, a World War I exhibit. Since then, he has contributed to exhibits on World War II air power and Cold War naval aviation. He currently serves as the museum's Curatorial Assistant for Model Aircraft.