UPDATE: This item has been recovered.

The following photograph album has recently gone missing from a customer's collection. If anyone is offered this album (or parts that sound suspiciously like it) please contact John Kuenzig at (978) 887-4053 or orders@kuenzigbooks.com SIXTY-SIX ORIGINAL IMAGES FROM THE LANDMARK HARVARD-BOSTON AERO MEET OF 1910, THE FIRST MAJOR AVIATION EXHIBITION ON THE EAST COAST. THERE ARE IMAGES OF PRESIDENT TAFT, WILBUR WRIGHT AND GLENN CURTISS (HARVARD-BOSTON AERO MEET OF 1910). The Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was held from September 3rd to 13th, 1910. The Harvard Aeronautical Society was formed in 1909 and they held the next year the second aviation meet in the United States; the first one was held in Los Angeles earlier in 1910. The local citizens raised $50,000 to fund the event and put up $40,000 in prize money, including contests for endurance, speed and altitude. The publisher of The Boston Globe put up $10,000 for a thirty-three mile race around the Boston Light. Some of the great early aviators who participate were Wilbur Wright, Glenn Curtiss, Claude Grahame-White, A.V. Roe, Walter Brookins and Ralph Johnstone. President Taft and his family attended. It is estimated that one million people saw a plane during the meet, and it still was not enough to satisfy the crowds, since the flyers continued two days after the official end of the meet. The result was to convince hundreds of thousands of Americans that flying was safe and possible. Photograph album. 5” x 7”. September 1910. Boston. A terrific photograph album detailing the important Harvard-Boston Aero Meet that occurred in September 1910. The album has about sixty-six snapshot photographs of the meet, most of them measuring 4 1?2” by 3 1?2”. There is a note on the inside back cover noting “Berenice L. Payson, 43 Tremont St. Boston, Mass”; she was presumably either the photographer or the owner of the book. The photograph had terrific access to the field and the spectators; there are images from the landing strip, as well as some close-ups of President Taft, who attended the show. The images are of (and some images are counted more than once, depending on the subject of the photograph): President Taft & Family Wilbur Wright & his plane Glenn Curtiss & his plane Claude Grahame White (early British aviator) & his plane Clifford B. Harmon (early American aviator) & his plane Henri Farman (early French aviator) & his plane Louis Bleriot & his plane Cromwell Dixon & his balloon There are also images of Boston Mayor Fitzgerald and Governor Draper. There are a couple of crash photographs and several views of the crowd. In a foreshadowing of history, there is a photograph of a battleship target, and the aviators at the meet tried to drop something from their plane and hit it; a decade later, General Billy Mitchell would prove that planes could sink a battleship. There are also two loose studio portraits of an older woman and a younger girl. There are also twenty one pages of a cut-up booklet published by the Harvard Aeronautical Society, detailing the flyers (including the Wright Brothers, Grahame-White, Louis Bleriot and William Hilliard), the (very brief) history of the organization, and various aeronautical terms (such as camber, ailerons, elevator and rudder). The outside blue suede covers are in poor condition, but the interior pages are in fine condition and nearly all of the images are in fine condition. An amazing early aviation collection.