While Chicagoans droned in bed before dawn one morning last week, it was morning 18,000 ft. up in the cold, paling sky where Pilot Roy Colton, 27, circled in an open cockpit biplane. In line of duty he was taking notes on the height and thickness of cloud layers, ice forming conditions, the direction and violence of the wind (80 m.p.h. that morning). His chief work was being done inside a little streamlined box strung on rubber cords between the outer struts of his right wing. In it, human hairs squeezed of oil...
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