The General Aeroplane Company was Detroit's first commercial airplane builder. GAC built three types of aircraft during the First World War and operated a flying school. The aircraft were the Verville Flying Boat , the Gamma S biplane with floats ( floatplane ), and the Gamma L biplane with wheels. All had engine installations driving pusher propellers.
8-707: The key player in the company was 18-year-old Corwin Van Husen, who was supported by his guardian W. Howie Muir and other key players of Detroit and Grosse Pointe society. Other major investors included Fred and Russell Alger (who were also investors in the Wright Company and had demonstrated the Wright craft at the Grosse Pointe Country Club four years earlier), Herbert B. and Frank P. Book, Wm. Hendrie, and Jerome H. Remick . In November 1915,
16-700: The GAC hired 24-year-old Alfred V. Verville , an experienced airplane designer who would be a part of Detroit's aviation activities for years to come. Design of the company's first airplane, a two-passenger biplane flying boat, was completed in December and construction of the hull was begun by the Mayea Boat & Aeroplane Works . The flying boat was flight tested during early 1916 and was advertised nationally for sale beginning in September. The U.S. Navy purchased
24-474: The GAC plane a boost by running a two-page story about the as yet unproved craft. For the winter the Gamma was fitted with wheels to replace the floats. On its maiden flight from frozen Lake St. Clair, a wind blew the Gamma into a snow bank, and it crashed. The pilot, William Bonney was unhurt, but the Gamma was destroyed. On August 28, 1918, GAC ceased operations. Wright Company The Wright Company
32-691: The Wright Company built approximately 120 airplanes across all of its different models between 1910 and 1915. Many of the papers of the Wright Company are now in the collection of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, while others are held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress also holds the papers of Grover Loening , the second Wright Company factory manager, while
40-540: The Wright Company in Dayton in 1910 and 1911 were the first in the United States constructed specifically for an airplane factory and were included within the boundary of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in 2009. The Wright Company concentrated its efforts on protecting the company's patent rights rather than on developing new aircraft or aircraft components, believing that innovations would hurt
48-590: The company's efforts to obtain royalties from competing manufacturers or patent infringers. Wilbur Wright died in 1912, and on October 15, 1915, Orville Wright sold the company, which in 1916 merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company to form the Wright-Martin Company. Orville Wright, who had purchased 97% of the outstanding company stock in 1914 as he prepared to leave the business world, estimated that
56-556: The plane as a trainer, the first built-in-Detroit airplane sold for profit. With U.S. involvement in World War One imminent, Verville began designing a military airplane, the Gamma. By November 1916, the prototype, a "pusher" type plane with the engine and propeller behind the crew, was fitted with seaplane floats and test flown from its base on the Detroit River. In the meantime, the leading industry magazine Aviation gave
64-601: Was the commercial aviation business venture of the Wright brothers, established by them on November 22, 1909, in conjunction with several prominent industrialists from New York and Detroit with the intention of capitalizing on their invention of the practical airplane. The company maintained its headquarters office in New York City and built its factory in Dayton , Ohio . The two buildings designed by Dayton architect William Earl Russ and built by Rouzer Construction for
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