Early American Aircraft Companies

How a photograph in a museum led to research on the history of the aviation industry and veered off into admiration of early 20th century corporate logos and indirectly to this blog.

By Darcy MacLaren

Last spring I visited the Museum of Flight with some friends. In one of the exhibits on the early history of the Boeing Company, there was a photograph of some young men with now famous last names who started companies to manufacture airplanes.

In the early 20th century, flight was the hot new technology, changing society as much as the internet has in our lifetimes.

Some research using Wikipedia and various corporate websites allowed me to create this chronology of the young men, the companies they started and what happened to the companies. Some still exist, either on their own or as divisions of other companies. Some have disappeared.

Early American Aircraft Companies

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Founder	Company Name	Date	Current Company
Edson Gallaudet	Gallaudet Engineering	1910	General Dynamics
Greely S. Curtiss	Burgess & Curtiss	1911	Curtiss-Wright, North American Aviation (owned by General Motors 1933-1948), Rockwell International, Boeing
William & Oliver Thomas	Thomas Brothers	1912	General Dynamics
Glenn Martin	Glenn L. Martin	1911	Martin-Marietta, Lockheed Martin
William Boeing	Boeing Airplane	1916	United Aircraft and Transport (Boeing)
Allan & Malcolm Loughead	Loughead Aircraft Mfg.	1916	Lockheed Martin
Chance M. Vought	Lewis & Vought	1917	Vought-Sikorsky, Chance Vought, LTV, Vought Aircraft Industries
Donald Wills Douglas Sr.	Davis –Douglas Co.	1920	McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing
Igor Sikorsky	Sikorsky Mfg. Co.	1925	United Technologies
Lloyd Stearman	Stearman Aircraft	1927	United Aircraft and Transport, Boeing
Clyde V. Cessna	Cessna Aircraft	1927	Textron
Leroy Grumman	Grumman Aircraft Engineering	1930	Northrop Grumman
Walter H. Beech	Beech Aircraft	1932	Raytheon
Lawrence Dale Bell	Bell Aircraft	1935	Textron
James Smith McDonnell	McDonnell Aircraft	1939	McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing
Jack Northrop	Northrop Corp.	1939	Northrop Grumman

While the chronology was interesting, the corporate logos were, it turned out, even more fascinating. Many of them showed the Art Deco sensibility of the time, combined with stylized pictures of birds to indicate flight. (Interestingly, in Hawaiian the word for airplane “mokulele” translates roughly as jumping boat. If airplane manufacturing had originated in Hawaii, would the logos have used marine imagery instead?)