• WASHINGTON •
Drivers hoping to slip the surly —and traffic congested — bonds of Earth moved a step closer to realizing their dream Monday, as a U.S. firm announced the successful test flight of a street-legal airplane.
Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia says its production prototype Transition car-plane has successfully carried out an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year. “With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream,” says founder Carl Dietrich. (Read More)
Now picture this:
| An interesting innovation was the combination drive-in and fly-in theater. On June 3, 1948, Edward Brown, Junior opened the first theater for cars and small planes. Ed Brown’s Drive-In and Fly-In of Asbury Park, New Jersey had the capacity for 500 cars and 25 airplanes. An airfield was placed next to the drive-in and planes would taxi to the last row of the theater. When the movies were over, Brown provided a tow for the planes to be brought back to the airfield.The drive-in theater movie experience cannot be beat! |
Brown’s theater was a novelty in a larger industry that was already enjoying a growth spurt. The first drive-in theater opened in June 1933, also in New Jersey, and by 1948 there were 820 of them nationwide. The real boom came in the ’50s, though, and by 1958 the number of theaters nationwide had surpassed 4,000.
In fact, Brown opened a second one — Fly-in Drive-In #2 — on New Jersey Route 72 in Manahawkin. He operated a conventional drive-in theater, too, making him something of a drive-in mogul.
June 3, 1948
Source: Various