Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 45

Price Realized: $ 4,182
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(AVIATION.) Archive from early airplane manufacturer Grover C. Loening. Approximately 400 photographs, blueprints, letters, memoranda, and other documents, 0.7 linear feet, various sizes and conditions but generally sound. Vp, circa 1913-75
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Additional Details

Grover Cleveland Loening (1888-1976) was a pioneering American engineer. He received the first-ever aeronautical engineering degree (from Columbia in 1910), managed the Wright Company for Orville Wright's factory from 1913 to 1914, operated his own companies from 1917 to 1933, and then served as a consultant to the United States military. In 1969 he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Most notably, a series of photographs documents Loening's work on the Model G flying boat for the Wright Company in 1913. Several of the prints depict Wright and Loening, and the above photograph shows Wright flying the prototype with another co-pilot. A group of 8 blueprints and 5 of Loening's original pencil drawings which show components designed for the Loening Aeronautical Engineering Corporation, 1918-1920, along with his 1918 proposal to the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation, and a 1918 test report on the Loening Monoplane M8.
Also of interest are a disbound notebook, 1928-29, filled with sketches and engineering notes; a program for a dinner Loening gave for Orville Wright in 1917; and 19 patents issued to Loening, 1927-33. From Loening's period as a military consultant is his April 1945 "Aircraft Survey for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air," as well as his 1937 "Report on Aircraft in the Merchant Marine." Other papers document Loening's research and promotion of his books on aviation history in the 1970s. The extensive correspondence file includes letters signed by figures including Juan Trippe, Louis Breguet, William Randolph Hearst Jr., astronaut Michael Collins, and James Harold Doolittle.
an important research archive from a major figure in american aeronautics. A more detailed inventory is available upon request.