John Stringfellow flight achievement was referenced in the movie "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965). The character Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger), a German airplane designer, explains that it was a model airplane that made the first powered flight in 1848 and that though his own experience with airplane design is with building models, the principles are the same. His design for an airplane to be built from the scraps of their crashed plane will fly them out of the desert to safety. John Stringfellow John Stringfellow (1799 – 13 December 1883) was born in Sheffield, England and is known for his work
Lost in the Desert story switches several times to Dirkie's father Anton DeVries (played by the director Jamie Uys, credited as Jamie Hayes) and follows his increasingly desperate efforts to locate his son, including having a couple of million leaflets specially printed and spread over the desert from a plane, containing instructions for Dirkie on how to survive in the desert, and assuring him that his father loves him and won't give up trying to rescue him. The film features the unusual technique of showing Anton playing the piano, then switching to Dirkie in the desert while continuing to use the piano music as