EXHIBIT
The Founders’ Tree
The people who built America’s airplanes knew each other.
The airplanes of the 1920s and 1930s were less the product of a slide rule than of an imagination, and that imagination was powered by association, imitation, inspiration and competition. The men who built them knew each other. They worked in the same shops, left to start rival companies, invested in each other’s ventures and raced each other at the air meets. These three posters, which hang in the museum, trace those connections from Wichita out across the country, and to the airplanes in our hangars that came out of them.
IN OUR HANGARS
The airplanes in the story
- 1927 Travel Air 3000 NC1084: from Travel Air, the company Beech, Cessna and Stearman founded in 1925.
- 1929 Travel Air B4000 N13906: the later Travel Air biplane from the same Wichita shop.
- 1931 Curtiss-Wright Travel Air B-14-R Speedwing N12311: built at the Travel Air works after Curtiss-Wright bought the company in 1929.
- 1928 Stearman C3MB N6487: from Lloyd Stearman’s own company, after he left Travel Air.
- 1942 Boeing-Stearman PT-17 N67412: what Stearman’s company became under Boeing.
- 1928 Alexander Long Wing Eaglerock N5910: Al Mooney’s first design.
- 1940 Culver Cadet LCA N20988: Mooney’s design, from the company Walter Beech later took over.
- 1929 Lincoln-Page PT-W N561M: Victor Roos’s company before the American Eagle merger.
- 1931 American Eagle Eaglet 230 NC548Y: drawn by Edward Porterfield and built and sold new by American Eagle-Lincoln, with Roos as president.
- 1936 Porterfield 35-70 N326GH: Porterfield’s own company, a few years later.
- 1937 Taylor-Young Model A N19832: C.G. Taylor’s company after his first one became Piper.
- 1932 Nicholas-Beazley NB-8G N12518: one of the heartland builders, from Marshall, Missouri.
- 1938 Ryan SCW-145 NC18916: from Ryan in San Diego, part of the West Coast group.
Follow the founders and designers: Al Mooney · Lloyd Stearman · Edward Porterfield · Victor Roos.