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Fred C. Fisk and the family of Marlin W. Todd, Published 2000. Paperback, 136 pp.; 28 cm; 100th Anniversary of Flight Edition 1903-2003 (third edition, first published 1990); illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs, drawings, maps, and reproduced documents; drawings and bibliography, photo credits. Signed by Fred C. Fisk on title page ("With Best Regards").
In Good condition. Glossy blue illustrated covers (1945 Schwinn drawing of the brothers by Wm. Mark Young on front, the 1997 B-2 "Spirit of Ohio" naming-ceremony poster on rear) with moderate scuffing, light bumping and creasing to edges and corners. Binding tight. Foxing and spotting to the first few leaves, heaviest on the page facing the title. Otherwise unmarked. The facsimile signatures printed beneath the Introduction appear in all copies. Dayton-centered history of Wilbur and Orville Wright by two members of The Wheelmen, the antique-bicycle society, expanded from their 1980 Wheelmen articles, described in the acknowledgments as the first ever written on the Wright brothers' bicycle business. Foreword by Ivonette Wright Miller, niece of the brothers, who worked with the authors from 1978 to 1991. Covers the family homes, the schools, the newspapers the brothers printed, Orville's bicycle racing, the six bicycle-shop locations with maps of the West Side neighborhood, the kite-flying field, Orville's laboratory, the Boyd Building, grave sites, and the Dayton monuments and museums, alongside the gliders, the Flyer, Kitty Hawk, and the honors that followed; also the Wheelmen's part in saving a Wright bicycle shop and the antique bicycles bought for it. Fisk (born 1928), a founding-era member of the Wheelmen, was drafted for Korea and met his wife while recovering from wounds in Japan; Todd (1906-1992), forty years with National Cash Register, did not live to see this edition, published by his family. A collector's and local historian's account rather than an academic one, with material on the bicycle years found in no other book.