History
Models on lines and flying in circles predate manned flight. Early versions merely constrained the model to fly in a circle but offered no control. This is known as Round-the-pole flying. The origins of control-line flight are obscure but the first person to use a recognizably modern system is generally considered to be Oba St. Clair, in June 1936, near Gresham, Oregon. Oba’s system used a rather large apparatus similar to a television antenna, onto which many lines were attached. This system is very different that those currently in use on modern control line models. But the name most associated with the promotion of control line, and the inventor of the formerly patented system known as "U-Control" (which was a trademark, and is the system in use on virtually every two line control line modes today.) was Nevilles E. " Jim" Walker. His "American Junior" company was by far the biggest producer of models, and held numerous patents on the two-line system until overturned during a patent infridgement suit, by Walker, against Leroy Cox, based on "prior art" from St. Clair in the 1955 trial. One of the most coveted prizes in control-line aerobatics competition, awarded to the winner of a flyoff between the US Junior, Senior, and Open age class Champions, was originally provided by and is named for Walker. This is one of the oldest perpetual trophies in modeling that is still awarded.
Read more about this topic: Control Line
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)