11-742: The Lawrance J-1 was an engine developed by Charles Lanier Lawrance and used in American aircraft in the early 1920s. It was a nine-cylinder, air-cooled radial design. During World War I the Lawrance Aero Engine Company of New York City produced the crude opposed twins that powered the Penguin trainers, and the Lawrance L-1 60 hp Y-type radial. After the end of World War I, the Lawrance engineers worked with both
22-592: A Lawrance J-1 on display. Data from A History of Aircraft Piston Engines Charles Lanier Lawrance Charles Lanier Lawrance (September 30, 1882 – June 24, 1950) was an American aeronautical engineer and an early proponent of air-cooled aircraft engines . Lawrance was born on September 30, 1882, in Lenox, Massachusetts , the son of Francis Cooper Lawrance Jr. (1858–1904) and his first wife, Sarah Eggleston Lanier (1862–1893). After his mother's death in 1893, his father remarried to Susan Ridgway Willing ,
33-525: A daughter of Rev. Morgan Dix , the rector of Trinity Parish . They lived at 153 East 63rd Street, in the National Register of Historic Places listed Barbara Rutherford Hatch House, and together, their children were: Lawrance died at his Long Island home, Meadow Farm in East Islip, New York , on June 24, 1950. Wright Whirlwind Too Many Requests If you report this error to
44-458: A sister of Ava Lowle Willing (who married John Jacob Astor IV ). They had a daughter, a half-sister to Lawrance, Frances Alice Willing Lawrance, who married Prince Andrzej Poniatowski (son of Prince André Poniatowski ) in 1919. From his parents marriage, Lawrance had a younger sister, Kitty Lanier Lawrance, who was raised by their paternal grandfather, as their parents died when she was still young. In 1915, Kitty married W. Averell Harriman ,
55-517: The Governor of New York (they divorced in 1928). Lawrance's maternal grandfather was banker Charles D. Lanier , a close friend of Pierpont Morgan . His great-grandfather was James F. D. Lanier , who founded Winslow, Lanier & Co. His paternal grandfather was Francis Cooper Lawrance, of Paris and Pau, France . In 1885, his paternal aunt, Frances Margaret Lawrance , married George Venables-Vernon, 7th Baron Vernon . Lawrance attended
66-617: The Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts , before Yale University , where he graduated in 1905, where he was a member of Wolf's Head . Shortly after his graduation from Yale, he joined a new automobile firm that went bankrupt by the financial panic of 1907 . He then went to Paris, where he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts , experimenting with aeronautics at the Eiffel Laboratory . Lawrance returned to
77-527: The Army and the Navy in developing their L-1 onto a nine-cylinder radial engine, which became the 200 hp Model J-1 . It was the best American air-cooled engine at the time and passed its 50-hour test in 1922. The U.S. Navy badly needed light, reliable engines for its carrierborne aircraft. As a means of pressuring Wright and other companies into developing radial engines, it gave a contract to Lawrance for 200 of
88-669: The J-1 radial and ceased buying the liquid-cooled Wright-Hispano engines. At the urging of the Army and Navy the Wright Aeronautical Corporation bought the Lawrance Company , and subsequent engines were known as Wright radials. The Wright Whirlwind had essentially the same lower end (crankcase, cam, and crankshaft) as the J-1. The New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks , Connecticut , has
99-1039: The United States in 1914 and in 1917, he founded the Lawrance Aero Engine Company in 1917. He designed the Lawrance J-1 air-cooled aircraft engine , the direct ancestor of the extremely successful Wright Whirlwind series of engines. Long-distance flights of Admiral Byrd , Charles Lindbergh , Amelia Earhart and Clarence Chamberlin were all made possible by the Whirlwind series of engines, which could operate continuously for 33.5 hours. Despite sensational publicity that Lindbergh's flight attracted, Lawrance himself remained in relative obscurity. In discussion with Harry Bruno about his need for publicity to attract funds, he complained, "Who remembers Paul Revere's horse?" Developed with US Navy funding in 1922, Lawrance's J-1 engine used aluminum cylinders with steel liners operated for 300 hours, when 50 hours endurance
110-487: The company to found Pratt & Whitney , Lawrance replaced him as company president. President Calvin Coolidge congratulated Lawrance for his development of the air-cooled aircraft radial engine that won the 1927 Collier Trophy for the year's greatest achievement in American aviation. In 1932, he wrote a book entitled Our National Aviation Program . In 1910, he married Emily Margaret Gordon Dix (1885–1973),
121-657: Was normal. The Army and Navy urged the Wright Aeronautical Corporation to buy Lawrance's company, and subsequent engines were built under the Wright name. In May 1923, Lawrance's company was purchased by Wright Aeronautical , as the United States Navy was concerned that Lawrance couldn't produce enough engines for its needs. Lawrance was retained as a vice president. The radial engines gave confidence to Navy pilots performing long-range overwater flights. In 1925, after Wright's president, Frederick B. Rentschler , left
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