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1985 Australia Twenty Dollars Paper - ECY
One light fold and one hard fold.
Obverse left panel has some soiling.
Upper and lower left corners dog eared.
Overall a good note and a great collection filler from this series.
Lawrence Hargrave was an excellent experimenter and his models were well crafted. He had the optimism that is essential for an inventor, and the perseverance that will not allow itself to be damped by failures. Modest, unassuming and unselfish, he always refused to patent his inventions, and was only anxious that he might succeed in adding to the sum of human knowledge. Many men smiled at his efforts and few had faith that anything would come of them. An honourable exception was Professor Richard Threlfall who, in his presidential address to the Royal Society of New South Wales in May 1895, spoke of his "strong conviction of the importance of the work which Mr Hargrave has done towards solving the problem of artificial flight". Threlfall called Hargrave the "inventor of human flight", and the debt supposed to be owed by the Wright brothers to Hargrave. The step he made in man's conquest of the air was an important one with far-reaching consequences, and he should be remembered as an important experimenter and inventor, who "probably did as much to bring about the accomplishment of dynamic flight as any other single individual".
*All biographical details are taken from Wikipedia for education purposes only
Obverse:Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith MC, AFC (9 February 1897 – 8 November 1935), often called Charles Kingsford Smith, or by his nickname Smithy, was a well-known early Australian aviator. In 1928, he made the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia. He also made the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland, the first flights between Australia and New Zealand, and the first eastward Pacific crossing from Australia to the United States. He also made a flight from Australia to London, and set a new record of 10.5 days.
Reverse:Lawrence Hargrave (29 January 1850 – 14 July 1915) was an engineer, explorer, astronomer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer.
Watermark: Captain Cook in left panel