Word: plane
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Flying as a passenger in a T-33 jet over Colorado, Air Force Colonel John Paul Stapp, rocket-sledding holder of the world land speed record (632 m.p.h.), found himself in a jam when the plane's engine flamed out. No slouch in an emergency, Stapp ejected himself at "somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 feet," back-somersaulted four times, then opened his chute to float to earth. His only memorable injury: a chipped ankle bone. His pilot, Captain Harry B. Davis, a Negro fighter-pilot veteran of the Korean war, was not so lucky, died after...
William Powell Lear is an inventive genius whose restless mind and huge energies have made him, at 56, the head of a $64 million business turning out close to 700 navigational, communications and control systems and devices for planes and missiles. Although he quit school in the eighth grade, Lear can sketch a complete instrument system for a single-engined plane or a jet transport on a nightclub napkin. In 1950, despite his well-earned reputation as a stay-up-all-night playboy, he won the Collier Trophy for distinguished service to aviation as a designer-manufacturer...
...opened a $250,000 laboratory to put his company into solid-state physics in his search for new products. Among far-out fields to be studied: microcircuitry (e.g., reducing the chassis of a satellite television unit to a few cubic inches) and electroluminescence (e.g., picturing all of a plane's instrument readings on a cockpit window so the pilot will not have to glance away even when landing or taking off). While moving farther into the wild blue yonder, he is also readying new gadgets for planes. His newest commercial product: the $1,500 Navcom (combination communications and navigation...
...discharged at 18, he soon opened his own radio consulting and manufacturing firm. Among his early jobs: designing a special coil that made possible the first practical commercial auto radio. He learned to fly, and in 1930 opened an aviation-electronics business that turned out the first practical light-plane radio. After World War II, Lear burgeoned as the world's largest manufacturer of autopilots and a major supplier of other gadgets for planes and a dozen missiles, including the Titan, Bomarc, Polaris and Nike-Zeus. On the side, after three quick marriages, Lear settled down with Wife...
Even without the big airliners, Lear has been doing well enough. Piedmont Airlines, a feeder line, has installed Lear instrument-landing equipment on eight of its planes, has found it "very satisfactory." Ozark Air Lines, another feeder, has also signed up. Lear profits in the first quarter of its fiscal year ran 33% ahead of 1958 (which registered an 87% gain over 1957) to better than $400,000. The backlog of firm orders was up to $77 million, biggest in the company's history, and a 10? dividend was declared, the third such quarterly dividend in a row. Last...