you might like this old aeroplane history

                                                          From  Google

page 10 by the editor Lynch and the Post prophecy article blown up below.

Another New Yorker closely associated with automobiles was Augustus Post, one of the first people in the city to own a motorcar (an electric model) and one of the first anywhere in the country to help establish an automobile garage. Post, like David Morris, was a direct contemporary of Orville Wright; all three men were born within a few years of each other in the 1870s.

Augustus Post stands today as a kind of Benjamin Franklin figure--a man of many talents who always seems to turn up when something important is happening. With degrees from BrooklynPolytechnic Institute, Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Post earned his living mainly as an editor and writer but gained the most attention for his exploits in aviation. He got hooked on flying in 1900 when he rode in a balloon in France. He went on to earn a name for himself in balloon racing. Years later, it was Post who suggested that New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offer a prize to the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in a heavier-than-air machine. Orteig's pot of $25,000 was what first attracted Charles Lindbergh to enter the competition.

Sometime during the first half of 1905, these five men--Charles Glidden, Homer Hedge, David Morris, John O'Rourke, and Augustus Post--decided that growing interest in ballooning in Europe was a signal for astute Americans to put some muscle behind development of aviation in the States. What better organization to do this, they concluded, than their own Automobile Club of America, which had already awarded an honorary membership to France's celebrity promoter of cars and balloons, Alberto Santos-Dumont. Accordingly, on June 7, 1905, the five men spun off a new group called the Aero Club of America, incorporated in New York City, home of four of the men (Glidden lived in Boston). The first officers were:

President, Homer Hedge; First Vice President, John O'Rourke; Second Vice President, Charles Glidden; Treasurer, Augustus Post; and Secretary, S.M. Butler (another member of the auto club).

An infant NAA was born.

AUGUSTUS POST  1874-1952
from Google

  
One of the most active of the Early Birds was Augustus Post, who passed on in October, 1952, at the age of seventy-eight, and who was absent for the first time from an Early Bird reunion that year. Aviation lost one of its most colorful characters in his passing. Besides being the thirteenth man in the United States to fly an aeroplane, he was a pioneer balloon racer; he was one of the first auto racers; and an actor --- who frequently took parts in Broadway plays. He was a writer, a publisher, a poet, and he was a co-founder of the Aero Club of America. He was a witty raconteur, among his favorite tales being the one about the balloon race in which he competed in about the year 1900, when his balloon burst over Berlinand he descended 3,000 feet in his parachute, landing on a rooftop right outside a ladies boudoir window! You could spot Augustus Post in any crowd. He wore a moustache and goatee which gave him a striking resemblance to Buffalo Bill. He used to way his goatee was a sign of patriotism because Uncle Sam wears one. He also claimed that it gave him a look of distinction, of elegance, and masculinity -- which indeed it did. He would not stand out in a present day group where beards are almost standard! He knew all about aeronautical events and personages from pre-airplane days right up to the present moment.
He was proud to have pioneered the automobile too. In one of his letter to us dated February 28, 1948, he said, "We are looking forward to next year's air races. I am sure we'll have the same good time. Sorry to lose Orville and Dick Depew", and he enclosed a pen sketch of himself driving a Winton car in a race from New York to Chicago in 1904. He is pictured wearing the conventional linen duster, goggles, and guantlets of the period.