James Slough Zerbe

James Slough Zerbe (1850–1921) was an American inventor and technical writer. He held patents in several fields and in the first decade of flight built and tested his own aircraft, the Zerbe Air Sedan, a multiplane that failed to leave the ground in a widely reported trial in Los Angeles in 1910. He is better remembered for his instructional books for young readers, published in the years before the First World War, which include Aeroplanes, Automobiles, Electricity for Boys, Carpentry for Boys and Practical Mechanics for Boys. Clear diagrams and an insistence on explaining why as well as how made them staples of the home workshop.