The 3 aeronautical annual books are among the most important pre-aviation books ever published. Prized by collectors, the original editions are extremely rare, a set being worth around $3,000. Now for the first time in more than a hundred years, and in celebration of this year's 100th Anniversary of Flight, they are being made available once again, and we at Wind Canyon Books are pleased to be the first to offer them to you! The Aeronautical Annuals are three of the books the Smithsonian Institution recommended to the Wright Brothers when they wrote asking for reading material on the subject of human flight. The brothers then obtained and devoured these books, giving them more incentive to investigate the problem of flying. These are books of vision, compilations of plans, dreams and schemes written by some of aviation's greatest visionaries. Leonardo da Vinci, Sir George Cayley, Ben Franklin, Samuel P. Langley, Sir Hiram Maxim, Augustus Herring, Octave Chanute and Otto Lilienthal, to name only a few. All share what they did to advance aviation. These books provided the Wrights with a wealth of knowledge about the thinking and experiments which had been done up until that time, giving them a foundation on which to formulate their own ideas. Fascinating reading! Each Aeronautical Annual has approximately