Download or read book The Unwelcome Assistant written by Steven Hensley and published by The Overmountain Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Wright brothers saga, Edward Huffaker enters and exits Kitty Hawk in 1901, before the fabled first controlled manned flight in 1903. Rescuing this figure from obscurity, the authors admirably refrain from overplaying his significance. The value of their short, straightforward biography is that Huffaker's place in aviation history might have been lost had not the late Steven Hensley found, in the 1950s, Huffaker's letters strewn about a Tennessee barn. What they reveal is that Huffaker dreamt of flight, constructed models of flying machines, and, as the Wrights did, sought out the era's recognized experts, Samuel Langley and Octave Chanute. The latter two recognized that Huffaker was serious, and Langley even hired him, so why Huffaker abandoned the field after 1901 and returned to his previous occupation (surveying) remains a bit of a mystery. In any event, the authors credit Huffaker with a crucial insight about flight (that the Bernoulli effect explains a wing's lift), and that in itself is enough to lure aviation buffs to this biography.