Today, the airplane speaks. The University of Houston's College
of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created
them. During so-called Bloody April, in 1917, Germany's
aeroplanes outclassed and outnumbered the allies. For every
German plane shot down, the Allies lost four. The Red Baron,
Manfred von Richthofen, then doing his worst, claimed nine
percent of the Allied losses. A month later, Captain Horatio
Barber published his book, The Aeroplane Speaks. Powered flight
was less than fourteen years old, and Barber was now lecturing
on flight to students at the Royal Flying Corps School. Those
students were preparing to fly against the Germans and the
light-hearted tone of Barber's book is marked contrast with the
desperate situation they would face in France. Barber's
frontispiece sets the tone. We see sixteen very diverse
characters in a drawing room. The names of a tall skinny man and
short squat man are High-Aspect Ratio and Low As