AIRCRAFT YEAR BOOK : 1920 (Damaged cover - 40%)

This is an unusual book - which contains detailed texts, maps and photographs - will tell you about American military aircraft and airmen during the early part of 20th Century.

INTRODUCTION
The Manufacturers Aircraft Association presents the Aircraft Year Book for 1920, the second of the series.

( … ) The Manufacturers Aircraft Association believes that the American public realizes the fact that we, the pioneers in aviation, must, and will lead the world. Prior to our entrance into the war, the art was neglected ; the few months of the conflict were taken up with an industrial effort, without parallel in the history of the United States, and unequaled, we believe, in the results visible when the Armistice was signed, November 11th, 1918. On that date began a new period for aeronautics, and this volume records what has been accomplished to the close of 1919.
Manufacturers Aircraft Association Inc.
New York, January 1st, 1920.

The United States entered the First World War in 1917. The two major American companies holding aviation patents, the Wright Company and the Curtiss Company, had effectively blocked the building of new airplanes, which were desired for the war effort.
The U.S. government, as a result of a recommendation of a committee formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt ( 1882 - 1945 ), then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, pressured the industry to form a cross - licensing organization, the Manufacturers Aircraft Association ( M.A.A. ), in 1917.
The association was designed as a patent pool which drew up a cross - licensing agreement to allow manufacturers to have unrestrained use of airplane patents in order to produce airplanes for the government's war effort. Early members included aviation pioneers Orville Wright ( 1871 - 1948 ) and Glenn Curtiss ( 1878 - 1930 ), as well as representatives of major aircraft manufacturing units in the United States.
( source : Wikipedia )