American Historical Ephemera & Photography

Oblong 8vo (8 x 11 in.), flexible pebbled brown leather. 45 silver prints, approx. 7 1/4 x 9 1/8 in., 43 of which are mounted on linen. Photographer’s stamp on verso of each photo. (Condition overall good, covers worn at extremities and at bolts at spine, with diagonal crease across upper cover; photos very good, slightly rubbed at edges).

A fantastic salesman’s presentation photo album documenting the factory, production, and airplanes at the Travel Air Manufacturing Company, one of the country’s leading aircraft manufacturers in the 1920s. In addition to numerous photographs of individual planes and an aerial view of the Travel Air factory itself, this album includes various shots of men at work on the production floor—welding the frames, shaping the bodies, constructing, and covering the wooden wing frames, and so on—as well as detail shots of wood lamination, tube welding, and more, some of which have a marvelous abstract quality. One photo, showing the interior of a passenger plane, was also included in a publicity brochure for the Delta Air Service (later Delta Airlines), which flew Travel Airplanes for its first passenger flights in 1929.

The Travel Air Manufacturing Company was founded in 1924 in Wichita, Kansas, by Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman, with Olive Ann Mellor as bookkeeper, secretary, and later office manager. The company had an early focus on training and racing planes, several of which, the Type R “Mystery Ships,” were faster than any US military aircraft. It expanded rapidly and began manufacturing cabin monoplanes for airline and private use as well. In 1928 Travel Air was producing at a higher volume than any other US aircraft company. In 1929, seven Travel Airs were flown in the first ever Women’s Air Derby (commonly known as the “Powder Puff Derby”). In the leadup to the stock market crash, the company merged with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation of Patterson, New Jersey.

Photographer Edgar B. Smith was born in Wichita in 1896. He learned to fly with Travel Air founder Clyde Cessna, and operated a studio in Wichita for forty years, with a focus on aviation. He died in 1966 as “the dean of aviation photographers in Wichita,” having amassed what was believed to be the most complete collection of photographs of Wichita-built aircraft.

A richly detailed album documenting the production heyday of one of the most important aircraft manufacturers of the 1920s.

REFERENCES: “Wichita Silhouettes,” Wichita Eagle, 19 Oct. 1960, p. 11a. Item #7982.

[With:] PHILLIPS, Edward H. Travel Air: Wings Over the Prairie (Historic Aircraft Series). Eagan, MN: Flying Books, 1982. Free front endpaper AUTOGRAPHED- 4/11/1983 by Edward Phillips, Author; Truman and Newman Wadlow, brothers and Test Pilots for Travel Air; Clarence E. Clark, Chief Test Pilot for Travel Air; Doug Rounds, Retired Delta Air Lines Captain and Owned Travel Air 6000B, Limousine Air Travel Air.