“The Golden Ages of Aviation: An Introduction to the Series…”
by Paul Kaman

Where Earth Meets Sky: A Journey Through Time

There’s a moment in every child’s life when they first truly see an airplane. Not just notice it but see it—that impossible marriage of metal and air, defying everything their young minds know about weight and gravity. Their faces turn skyward, mouths slightly open, eyes tracking that silver cross against blue infinity. In that moment, they touch something primal, something that has haunted humanity since we first envied birds.

I had my moment as a child, standing in my parents’ backyard in Secunderabad, India.  A commercial jet traced its contrail across the afternoon sky, and I remember thinking:  There are people up there.  Right now.  Drinking Tea.  Reading newspapers.  Closer to God than to me.

That wonder never left me.  It led me to ultralight trikes, to giving farmers their first glimpse of their land from above, to standing transfixed at EVS Saudi 2025, watching a lone FlyNow eCopter hint at aviation’s next transformation.  But between that child’s wonder and today’s electric possibilities lies a story (actually, many stories) of how humanity learned to fly.

Yours truly in the Garden State of New Jersey!

This series will take you through aviation’s Golden Ages, those concentrated bursts of innovation when impossible became inevitable, when dreamers rewrote physics, when the sky ceased to be a ceiling and became a highway.

The Architecture of Ascension

We begin with the First Golden Age (1918-1939), that glorious, yet tragic, span between the world wars when humanity first experienced sustained flight. But this isn’t one story—it’s a symphony played in different keys across different continents, each with its own heroes, villains, triumphs, and catastrophes.

The American Movement: (which you’ll read first) tells of barnstormers and mail pilots, of Lindbergh’s lonely triumph and its consequences, of how a nation built on horizontal expansion suddenly discovered the vertical.  It’s jazz—improvisational, individualistic, sometimes discordant, but always moving forward.  We’ll meet Bessie Coleman learning French to earn wings denied her at home, Juan Trippe turning hero worship into a commercial empire, and yes, Lindbergh himself, whose arc from hero to anti-hero mirrors aviation’s own loss of innocence.

The European Symphony: (coming next) plays in a different register—more orchestral, more structured, but no less revolutionary.  Here, nations rebuilt themselves through aviation.  Germany, forbidden military aircraft, developed civilian designs so advanced they seemed pulled from tomorrow.  Britain and France competed with flying boats that were less aircraft than airborne estates.  And above it, all floated the great airships, those hydrogen-filled cathedrals that represented humanity’s most graceful conquest of the sky—until Lakehurst taught us that hubris burns at 1,000 degrees Celsius.

The Other Voices: (our third movement) shares stories often left untold—how Australia’s vast emptiness made aviation not a luxury but a lifeline, how Japan’s island consciousness shaped its unique aerial philosophy, how Africa became both Code Playground and a victim of colonial aviation, and how South America’s mountains and jungles demanded pilots become poets of survival.  These aren’t footnotes—they’re essential verses in aviation’s global song.

Then we’ll leap to the Second Golden Age (1945-1970s), when jets shrank the planet to a neighborhood size, as the question shifted from “can we fly?” to “how fast?” and “how many?”  But that’s a story for another day.

Why These Stories Matter Today

You might wonder why, in 2025, as we stand on the cusp of Advanced Air Mobility, we should care about barnstormers and flying boats, about heroes who died decades ago and aircraft that are now rusting in museums.

Here’s why: We’re about to do it all over again.

Those electric vertical takeoff aircraft gathering at technology exhibitions? They’re our new Jennys. Those skeptical investors dismissing small innovators? They’re echoing railroad barons who swore trains would always triumph. Those regulatory battles and infrastructure challenges? We’ve danced this dance before.

But this time, we have something our predecessors lacked—their stories. We know that golden ages exact prices, that heroes have shadows, that every Icarus who falls teaches the next generation to check their wings. We know that revolutions begin not with masses but with Rogers’ critical 2.5%, those innovators and early adopters who see tomorrow while others defended yesterday.

The Mythology We’re Living

Throughout this series, we’ll return to ancient stories—Icarus and Daedalus, Prometheus and his fire, Mercury with his winged sandals. Not because aviation needs mythology, but because mythology needs aviation. Those old stories were humanity’s way of encoding truths too large for plain speech. Now we live those truths at 30,000 feet.

Each golden age is humanity’s latest attempt to steal fire from the gods. Each crash—literal or metaphorical—reminds us that gifts come with costs. Each breakthrough proves that mortals can touch divinity, if only for a moment, if only at a significant risk.

An Invitation to Fly

So come with me on this journey. We’ll start at America’s county fairgrounds, where farmers first touched the clouds, then move to Europe’s imperial capitals, where nations competed with wings instead of armies, and visit the forgotten airfields where aviation’s other pioneers wrote their own chapters in the sky.

We’ll meet heroes who soared and heroes who fell, visionaries who foresaw tomorrow and villains who tried to chain us to yesterday. We’ll trace how the impossible became inevitable, how dreams turned into schedules, and how mythology evolved into an industry.

Most importantly, we’ll discover that every golden age carries within it the seeds of the next. The barnstormer’s courage becomes the airline pilot’s routine. The mail pilot’s navigation becomes the GPS we trust without a second thought. The pioneers’ deaths led to the development of safety regulations that allowed millions to fly without fear.

As I learned that day in my parents’ backyard, and again when I took that Virginia farmer above his own fields, and once more watching that FlyNow eCopter in Saudi Arabia—the miracle isn’t that we fly. The miracle is that we never stop wanting to fly higher.

FlyNow Aviation Booth at EVS Saudi in Riyadh and their amazing eCopter – The Ford Model-T of eVTOLs

The golden ages of aviation aren’t really about airplanes. They’re about us—what we dream, what we dare, what we’re willing to sacrifice for the view from above.

So, fasten your seatbelts. We’re about to take off on a journey through time, across continents, beyond horizons. We’re going to discover how humanity learned to fly, fell, and learned to fly again.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll glimpse what golden age awaits us next.

Welcome aboard.