In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

AIRPLANES
Airplanes look stout, rather than fragile or elegant. Some of them reach
impressive dimensions, like the Dornier Superwal, a hydroplane with
two 700-horsepower Rolls Royce engines and a wingspan of twentyeight
meters. Their wooden propellers are imposing, and are mostly
connected to the nose rather than the wings. Many of them are biplanes.
In monoplanes, the wings are located above the fuselage. These wings
often cover the pilots, who sit either in narrow cabins of glass or behind
low transparent windshields. In the latter case, the head and shoulders
of the pilot become part of the airplane's silhouette; but even if the pilot'S
body is enclosed by the aircraft, it remains visible. The plane and the
pilot together look like a centaur with a tiny head and an enormous
body. This form can trigger two different chains of association. One
might think of the human body as being reduced to a bust-a process in
which some of its parts get lost and are replaced by the body of the
aircraft. What remains of the pilot's body is integrated with the machine's
body, and the pilot'S life depends on the plane's ability to cohere
as an assemblage of mechanical parts. Alternatively, one might think of
the human body as having entirely vanished. But the human mind,
symbolized by the pilot's head, has control over the much more powerful
mechanical body of the aircraft.
In an interview for the Berliner Tageblatt, published on April 8, Lieutenant
John A. Macready, who is identified as a professor of economics
at "Leland Stanford University" and who claims to have recently
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