PAUL MACCREADY, FATHER OF HUMAN-POWERED FLIGHT, TO SPEAK AT HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE ON ENERGY EFFICIENT TRAVEL

Dr. Paul MacCready, chairman and founder of AeroVironment, will deliver a lecture on "Energy Needed for Transportation: Aided and Unaided," Wednesday, September 17, 7 p.m., in Galileo Hall at Harvey Mudd College. The event is free and open to the public, and is part of this fall's Dr. Bruce J. Nelson '74 Distinguished Speaker Series at Harvey Mudd College.

According to MacCready, "Transport efficiency can be incredible-and non-polluting." His talk will address how the human body can use wind and water to move quickly and easily: for example, harnessing wind to power sailplanes. He will also show how efficiency can be applied to machines, so much so that a modern electric car can travel over 300 miles on one battery charge.

Efficiency, conservation and "doing more with less" have been key themes in MacCready's work. He is considered to be the father of human-powered flight, building the only human-powered plane to fly across the English Channel.

MacCready's Southern-California-based AeroVironment company is the developer of the unmanned Helios solar plane, built for NASA, which holds the altitude record for a propeller-driven aircraft. Helios is a descendant of the Solar Challenger, a piloted solar plane that flew 163 miles from Paris to England. AeroVironment has also worked on both solar- and battery-powered cars.