MAKE subscriber Will Pickering sent us a link to this fascinating video. Will writes:

This came through one of my steam email lists. Pretty cool plane modified with a 150hp flash boiler steam engine. Made for an almost silent airplane. And it can even go in reverse!

From the lengthy YouTube description:

A Travel Air 2000 biplane made the world’s first piloted flight under steam power over Oakland, California, on 12 April 1933. The strangest feature of the flight was its relative silence; spectators on the ground could hear the pilot when he called to them from mid-air. The aircraft, piloted by William Besler, had been fitted with a two-cylinder, 150 hp reciprocating engine.

[Thanks, Will!]

The Besler Steam Plane