The Project Gutenberg eBook, Around the World in Ten Days, by Chelsea
Curtis Fraser

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Title: Around the World in Ten Days

Author: Chelsea Curtis Fraser

Release Date: November 23, 2006 [eBook #19907]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE WORLD IN TEN DAYS***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

AROUND THE WORLD IN TEN DAYS

by

CHELSEA CURTIS FRASER

Author of "Work-a-Day Heroes," "Secrets of the Earth,"
"Boys' Book of Battles," "Boys' Book of Sea Fights,"
"The Young Citizens Own Book," etc.

The World Publishing Company
Cleveland, Ohio ------ New York City

Copyright, MCMXXII, By
The World Syndicate Publishing Company
Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

In the infancy of aviation, the early 1920's,
no one dreamed that the close of the decade
would see it firmly and permanently
established--a leader among the nation's industries.
Heavier-than-air flight is perhaps the most
amazing contribution of the 20th century.

It is easy to thrill to the seeming marvels of
our own times, but only the short-sighted thinker
believes in the perfection of present scientific
progress. The 300-mile-an-hour airplane which
Fraser conceived in this book for the speed of
the Sky-Bird II was little more than so many
words when he wrote it. . . . today we have
400-mile-an-hour fighting planes. Today we have
in this country an intricate highway system, but
perhaps within your own lifetime our highways,
and the automobiles which skim over them, will
be laughed at as obsolete and useless.

Thus it is that "the seemingly impossible of
the fiction of today becomes outdone by the facts
of tomorrow," as the author aptly phrased it.

In 1920 the idea of going around the world in
ten days was as preposterous as that projected
by Jules Verne in 1873 when he wrote _Around
the World in Eighty Days_. But time has a way
of hurling ridicule back as effectively as a
boomerang. For we have seen and marvelled at the
shattering not only of the mythical eighty-day
record but even the ten-day record, as progress
wends its ceaseless, ambitious, difficu