Washoe County Library System

Provides an easy-to-read overview of the history of aircraft.

Presents the life of Emma Lilian Todd, an inventor, engineer, and patent office worker who designed a successful flying machine after many failures.

"Of all people who might have solved the problem of human flight, few would have suspected Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a fusty, old-school member of the Wurrtemburg nobility, recently ousted from the German military and convinced that a flying machine will be his ticket back to military glory. Instead, by the dawn of the twentieth century, he creates something much bigger: a system of flight that embodies the cutting edge of multiple sciences and...

By exploring archival films, photographs and actual drawings and materials, students will learn of the Wright brothers, especially through reenactments. They had to test their ideas about flight before finally building their first powered airplane.