Willis J. Abbot

Comprehensive 1918 survey of aviation and submarine warfare in WWI. Covers the development of military aircraft and submarine tactics with wartime illustrations. This Naval Classics edition features RKHS (Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space) analytical enrichments including surprisal analysis, narrative complexity metrics, and computational literary analysis that illuminate the text from a modern data-science perspective.

Victorian science-fiction adventure combining early aviation and submarine technology, originally published 1908. Features dirigible combat, underwater exploration, and prophetic visions of modern naval warfare. This Naval Classics edition features RKHS (Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space) analytical enrichments including surprisal analysis, narrative complexity metrics, and computational literary analysis that illuminate the text from a modern data-science perspective.

Book Excerpt: builder's adze; her soil was hard and obdurate to the cultivator's efforts; and her people had not, like those who settled the South, been drawn from the agricultural classes. Moreover, as I shall show in other chapters, the sea itself thrust upon the New Englanders its riches for them to gather. The cod-fishery was long pursued within a few miles of Cape Ann, and the New Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing scarcity of the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of Newfoundland banks. The value of the whale was first taught them by great carcasses washed up on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this gigantic game was pursued in open boats within sight of the coast. From neighborhood seafaring such as this the progress was easy to coasting voyages, and so to Europe and to Asia. There is some conflict of historians over the time and place of the beginning of ship-building in America. The first vessel of which we have record was the "Virginia," built at the mouth of theRead More

Book Excerpt: builder's adze; her soil was hard and obdurate to the cultivator's efforts; and her people had not, like those who settled the South, been drawn from the agricultural classes. Moreover, as I shall show in other chapters, the sea itself thrust upon the New Englanders its riches for them to gather. The cod-fishery was long pursued within a few miles of Cape Ann, and the New Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing scarcity of the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of Newfoundland banks. The value of the whale was first taught them by great carcasses washed up on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this gigantic game was pursued in open boats within sight of the coast. From neighborhood seafaring such as this the progress was easy to coasting voyages, and so to Europe and to Asia. There is some conflict of historians over the time and place of the beginning of ship-building in America. The first vessel of which we have record was the "Virginia," built at the mouth of theRead More

(This book has never before been printed with these illustrations, photographs or narrations)This is the story of the invention, development and uses of the airplane, dirigible and submarines in World War One, what many were calling "those infernal machines and their fearless crews." With color plates and hundreds of illustrations, it takes you into the first submarines, airplanes and the dirigibles, those infernal machines. I read Willis Abbot's book Aircraft and Submarines (1918) believing it would be a history of the airplane and submarine development. As good a description as it was, the further I read the more disappointed it became to me. It did not explain the grass roots of how these machines were developed. In all of my previous books I like specific construction criteria from prototype to new modern examples. I found Mr. Abbot's work to be lacking in specifics to really keep my interest. So I strived to improve it with these additions.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.