JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post 

The iconography of the Moon is certainly wide and vast, but I’m thinking that this may be a very good candidate for the first time that the Moon appears as an airplane. I found this lovely image depicting the champion of the air, the great and all-knowing height-highness, the Moon. In 1914, eleven years after the first powered heavier than air flight of the Wright brothers, the development of more sophisticated was appreciating at a high rate, and there were newer higher records for (fixed wing) altitudes. (In 1908 the altitude record was about 360′; in 1910, it stood at 8,000′–balloons had achieved loftier records, around 40,000′ in 1912.)  This was a sly way of pointing out that try as they may and try as they might, the inhabitants of Earth wouldn’t come quite so close to the Moon as they would dream.  And that was true until Apollo 8 found itself on the far side of the Moon, only 56 years later.   [Source: The Day Book, Chicago, March 24, 1914. Image provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL. Persistent link: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-03-24/ed-1/seq-31/]