Reinventing the Propeller

Jeremy R. Kinney is a Curator in the Aeronautics Department of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. Kinney received his PhD in the history of technology in 2003 from Auburn University, Alabama. His research and curatorial focus is aeronautics in the first half of the twentieth century, with a specific emphasis on interwar and World War II military aviation, air racing, and aircraft propulsion technology. His publications include Alaska and the Airplane: A Century of Flight (with Julie Decker, 2013), Airplanes: The Life Story of a Technology (2008), and the award-winning The Wind and Beyond: Journey into the History of Aerodynamics in America (with James R. Hansen, D. Bryan Taylor and J. Lawrence Lee, 2009), essays in various anthologies, and articles in ICON and the Journal of Aircraft.

• 1. Introduction. The propeller and the modern airplane; 2. 'The best propeller for starting is not the best for flying'; 3. 'Engineering of a pioneer character'; 4. A 'new type adjustable-pitch propeller'; 5. 'The propeller that took Lindbergh across'; 6. 'The ultimate solution of our propeller problem'; 7. No. 1 propeller company; 8. A gear shift for the airplane; 9. Constant-speed; 10. 'The Spitfire now 'is an aeroplane''; 11. A propeller for the air age; 12. Conclusion. The triumph and decline of the propeller; Essay on sources; Index.

'Jeremy R. Kinney's masterful study of the evolution of the aircraft propeller not only represents an important contribution to the history of flight technology, it is also that rare specialist account that illuminates broader questions in the development of complex technical systems.' Tom D. Crouch, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution