1851 A Treatise on the Aeropleustic Art, or Navigation in the Air, By Means of Kites or Buoyant Sails: With a Description of the Charvolant, or Kite Carriage. And Containing Numerous Most Amusing and Interesting Anecdotes Connected With Several Extraordinary Excursions Both By Sea and Land

Description

Folding Plates, Illustrated, Leather Binding, Very Scarce

A very scarce work.

The second edition of this work.

Illustrated with a folding plate, and six plates. All plates are present.

The folding plate depicts the patent kite and Charvolant. The other plates show a shipwreck being saved by a kite, a group of children being dragged into water by a strong kite, a successful sail from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight, Charvolants travelling in different directions by the same wind, a steersman dashing boldly out upon the turf, and a woman shouting that a kite hit the board outside her shop. 

Collated, bound without the advertisement leaf to the rear. Collated from Jisc from a copy held at the British Library.

An important work on aerial navigation and the aeropleustic science, particularly through the means of kites.

George Pocock invented the 'Charvolant', a kite drawn carriage, the design and usage of which is detailed in this work. 

Pocock patented the design of his Charvolant buggy in 1826, after many experiments from which he concluded that kites were capable of lifting the weight of humans - he often conducted experiments on his children to test this theory.

In this work Pocock details that the buggy was able to go to twenty miles an hour over considerable distances. On one occasion, a Chavorlant overtook the coach of the Duke of Gloucester, a large breach of etiquette.

The author was the grandfather of W. G. Grace, a famous cricketer who was important in the development of the sport, and is considered to be one of the greatest cricketers of all time.

Curiously this second edition relates a story in Pocock's voice in which his family proposed a visit to London in the summer of 1846, but Pocock died in 1843.

Plates are by Rose Gilbert after David Cox Junior.