Carillon Historical Park Hosts Free Event

Aviation Trail
Oct 3
1 min read

Best-selling author Burton W. Folsom, Jr., Ph.D - Tues. Oct. 21, 2025:

Burton W. Folsom Jr., Ph.D.—a professor, economic historian, best-selling author, and distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College—will present Flight at Any Cost: The Dramatic Race to Invent the Airplane on Oct. 21, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. at Carillon Historical Park. The talk recounts the quests of Samuel Pierpont Langley and the Wright brothers to achieve the world’s first powered flight.

In his book, Uncle Sam Can’t Count, co-authored with his wife Anita Folsom, Dr. Folsom, a scholar of free-market capitalism, devotes a chapter titled The Wright Brothers Conquer the Air, as he compares Langley’s subsidized work to that of Dayton’s self-funded, self-taught bicycle makers. The book examines the history of government subsidies in the U.S., noting that such programs have sometimes struggled to achieve their goals.

An eminent economic historian, Dr. Folsom appears regularly on news programs and is the author of ten books, including FDR Goes to War and The Myth of the Robber Barons, now in its ninth edition.

Who: Dr. Burton W. Folsom, Jr., Ph.D.

What: Flight at Any Cost: The Race to Invent the Airplane, a presentation recounting the quests of Samuel Pierpont Langley and the Wright brothers to achieve the world’s first powered flight.

Where: Carillon Historical Park, 1000 Carillon Blvd., in the Eichelberger Pavilion.

When: Oct. 21 at 6:30 p.m.

Cost: The event is free to the public.

Reservations: 937.293.2841, Ext. 137