Alfred Lawson | |
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 | |
| Born | Alfred William Lawson March 24, 1869 London, England |
| Died | November 29, 1954 (aged 85) |
| Nationality | Born in the United Kingdom, emigrated to Canada, then the United States by 1872 |
| Known for | Baseball, aviation, philosophy |
Alfred William Lawson (March 24, 1869 – November 29, 1954) was an English-born professional baseball player, aviator, and utopian philosopher. He played baseball, managed and promoted leagues from 1887 through 1916, and pioneered the U.S. aircraft industry. He also published two early aviation trade journals.
Lawson is frequently cited as the inventor of the airliner and received several of the first air mail contracts, which he ultimately did not fulfill. He founded the Lawson Aircraft Company in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to build military training aircraft and later the Lawson Airplane Company in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to build airliners.[1]
The crash of his ambitious Lawson L-4 "Midnight Liner" during its trial flight takeoff on May 8, 1921, ended his best chance for commercial aviation success.
In 1904, he wrote a utopian novel, Born Again,[2] in which he developed the philosophy which later became Lawsonomy.[3]
- ^ Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame Inductee: Alfred W. Lawson.
- ^ Alfred Lawson. Born Again. Wox & Conrad: New York, 1904. (Online at Project Gutenberg)
- ^ Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and fallacies in the name of science. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486203948. OCLC 233892.