An interesting new book is now getting into circulation that discusses a few of the birds we WON'T Be commemorating this coming week. When you consider the hilarious attempts at flight that proceeded and followed the Wright brother's successful flight at Kitty Hawk 100 years ago (December 17), their achievement is even more amazing according to author Phil Scott.

Scott describes the wild and wooly efforts of early aeronauts to soar like birds, some literally with flapping wings. He chronicles it all in a new book, "The Wrong Stuff?: Attempts at Flight Before (& After) the Wright Brothers," (Hylas Publishing/$24.95 Hardcover).

"We really need to commemorate these valiant if misguided efforts," says Scott, journalist and aviation researcher. "The intrepid souls whose only dream was to fly like eagles were an imaginative lot."

A few of the early aeronauts built odd-looking wing flappers, or ornithopters as they came to be called. Leonardo Da Vinci was probably the first to design such a machine-his "Great Bird" was a sort of a human bat suit with wings of starched linen and leather.

Other early inventors even strapped living birds to themselves, figuring the birds could carry a man. One man even tied wings to his arms and legs hoping he could soar over Paris, but immediately landed in the river Seine.

Other French aeronauts boldly marched into the fray, including Clement Ader with his bat-like Eole and Avion III; Captain Dorand's Aeroplane which was intended to be a spotter aircraft for the military-except that it wouldn't fly.

Marquis d'Equevilley-Montjustin's strange and beautiful multiplane began with a four-wheel platform upon which the pilot stood, surrounded by hoops which enclosed five pairs of wings and never left the ground. The flying albatross of Jean-Marie Le Bris did manage to take off, then promptly crashed into a rock quarry.

"Some of the odd machines built after the Wright Brothers came close to real flight: The Caproni Ca. 60, which resembled a comfy houseboat, flew exactly once," says Scott. "Pescara's Helicopter was the very first helicopter to hover above the ground for one minute and the Hafner Rotabuggy, a Jeep with rotors invented by the British during World War II, was a good idea whose time may never come."

"You can be sure... that in a garage somewhere someone is working on a strange bird," says Scott in the introduction of The Wrong Stuff. He has barely more than a little learning and big dreams. That, after all, is what makes flying magic."

FMI: www.hylaspublishing.com