Frederick A. Talbot

Reprint of the original, first published in 1913.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1913.

Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War is a classic war aviation history text by Frederick A. Talbot Ever since the earliest days of aeronautical engineering, first by the dirigible balloon and then by the airplane, their use in time of war has been a fruitful theme for discussion. But their arrival was of too recent a date, their many utilities too unexplored to provide anything other than theories, many obviously untenable, others avowedly problematical. Yet the part airships have played in the Greatest War has come as a surprise even to their most convinced advocates. For every expectation shattered, they have shown a more than compensating possibility of usefulness. In this volume an endeavour has been made to record their achievements, under the stern test of trial, as an axiom of war, and to explain, in untechnical language, the many services to which they have been and may be applied.

There is an unfathomable fascination with the romance connected to the construction of great railways, yet little is known of the beginning and growth of the pioneering railways of the world, of the heavy tax that their construction imposed on the ingenuity, skill and resources of their builders. Speeding swiftly along a railway with a road-bed as smooth as an asphalt pavement conveys no impression of the perils and dangers faced, or of the infinite labour extended in the making of that steel line. The Railway Conquest of the World tells this fascinating story. First published in 1911, it considers the most representative, largest and most interesting enterprises between the two poles. Frederick A. Talbot comprehensively writes of some of the most famous railways in the world in this engaging account. With a thought to the creators of the railways themselves, he considers the railway surveyor’s adventurous life and the romance of construction itself before diving in to some of the greatest feats of technological advance: from the railway invasion of Canada to the Holy Railway of Mecca, and from Cecil Rhodes’ dream to the Iron Horse of Australasia.