The New York studio of Wallace Rigby is littered with paper, paper in such interesting shapes as a superman who flies through the air with the very greatest of ease and overhead monorail train cars. There are realistic scale models of famous ocean liners, cannons that work, trains, automobiles, speedboats powered by rubber, and airplanes-all of paper. The airplanes are truly phenomenal. Most of them are only scale models, but many fly really well. The working models range from a series of tiny gliders-a small matchbox serves as hanger-to a thirty-inch Spitfire; there is even a scale model of the novel Northrop Flying Wing. The cheerful, lively Englishman who creates these realistic models is internationally famous. He is an enthusiastic model-plane builder from way back, with all of a model builder's experiences. He could write his autobiography and name it "The Paste, Which Launched a Thousand Snips." His absorption in snappy snipping has occasioned incidents he smilingly relates.

One foggy night in France, when testing his Wakefield design for the next day's competition, he wound it to capacity, hand-launched it, and listened to the whirring sound of the prop as the ship faded into the mist. When the prop stopped, Rigby had no way of knowing where the ship had gone. He groped his way across the field. Suddenly, as he says, "There was a crescendo and the model hit me in the back of the neck!"

One major disadvantage of Rigby paper flying models is that they make animal mouths water. He has had his models eaten by "critters" on many occasions-by goats on Gibraltar, dogs in England, and miscellaneous pigs. But he keeps making new ones for kits, comic strips, and books; over 50,000 copies of his latest book have been sold.

Rigby's studio is a favorite gathering place for air-minded acquaintances who have a great time floating paper gliders from out his eleventh-floor window. Rigby snips them out as fast as their pilots can launch them. Some land on window ledges, where they are furtively snapped up by curious roomers. Others fly off toward the Hudson or spiral out of sight in a thermal. But Rigby's favorite anecdote is of an incident at Lake George, N.Y. He was showing some small boys how his paper models flew. Suddenly a speedboat cut across the lake. Out hopped an excited young man who said: "May I see that model? I know of a fellow in England who makes paper planes just like that-fellow name of Rigby!"