Huffaker, Edward Chalmers.

Edward Chalmers Huffaker was born in 1856 and graduated from Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va., and earned a masters from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

After teaching in public schools, he became in the 1890s a civil engineer in Bristol, Tenn. During this period, he became interested in problems of flight, becoming a correspondent with Samuel P. Langley, Smithsonian Institution director, and conducting his own observations of birds and air currents around Chuckey, Tenn. From these observations, Huffaker wrote a scientific paper, "The Value of Curved Surfaces in Flight," which applied earlier principles of water flow to air flow and the possibility of flight. This paper caught the attention of Octave Chanute, a wealthy aviation enthusiast, who helped secure Huffaker employment with Langley at the Smithsonian.

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