Mar 18, 2010 - Sale 2207

Sale 2207 - Lot 43

Price Realized: $ 2,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(AVIATION.) Archive of Stanley Yale Beach, aviation pioneer. 3 linear feet of letters, photographs and other documents, more than 1,000 items, mostly letters received by Beach in their original envelopes and carbon copies of his outgoing letters; various sizes and conditions. Vp, 1911-33, mostly 1924-33
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Additional Details

Stanley Yale Beach (1877-1955) is best remembered today as an early financial backer of Gustave Whitehead, who some believe had flown an aircraft two years before the Wright Brothers. Beach, a Yale graduate and Connecticut resident, began designing airplane engines on his own in 1905, without commercial success, and was also an early automotive enthusiast. His main source of income seems to have been a substantial trust left by his father's estate. He also served as aeronautical editor of Scientific American, and as an officer of the Aero Science Club, the Beach Engineering Company, and the Beach-Basenach Airship Company of America.
This substantial archive covers many aspects of Beach's professional and personal life, including dozens of letters between Beach and Nikolaus Basenach from 1929 to 1931 regarding their efforts to sell airships in America and secure a trans-Atlantic mail contract. Also included is a carbon of Beach's 1930 letter to young film producer Howard Hughes, attempting to sell an airship which would allow Hughes to travel to Europe "at any time you wish in absolute secrecy and privacy." Hughes's response (if any) has not been found. Among Beach's other correspondents in the aeronautical world were Leo Stevens, Beckwith Havens, and C.W. Erich Mayer. The collection also includes more than a hundred photographs of early airplanes and production processes. Many of these date from the 1920s, and were sent by Mayer and Beach's contacts in Germany. Of particular interest are a group of 21 photographs of the start of a cross-country air race in Mineola, NY in 1919 (pictured).
The correspondence also documents Beach's chaotic personal life. He left his wife and three children by 1910, and was living with another woman in New York City. In 1927, a court-appointed conservator took control of his share of the family trust fund, exacerbating his already troubled finances. Included are angry letters between Beach and his mother concerning this situation. Beach additionally maintained a correspondence with Vesta la Viesta of New York, a self-proclaimed "Mystic Seer & Healer, Planetary Explorer."