- Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart was a noted American aviation pioneer and women's rights advocate. Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, which she was awarded as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, a women's pilots' organization. - Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was, in his time, an aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer and director, a playboy, an eccentric, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for setting multiple, world air-speed records, building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules airplanes, producing the movies "Hell's Angels" and "The Outlaw", owning and expanding TWA, and for his debilitating eccentric behavior in later life. - Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (4 February 1902 - 26 August 1974), known as "Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle," was an American pilot famous for the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic, from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, NY to Paris in 1927 in the "Spirit of St. Louis." In the ensuing deluge of notoriety, Lindbergh became the world's best-known aviator. Charles Lindbergh is a recipient of the Medal of Honor. In the years prior to World War II, … - Burt Rutan
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan (born June 17, 1943 in Estacada, Oregon) is an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is most famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the suborbital rocket plane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004. - Glenn Curtiss
Glenn Hammond Curtiss (May 21, 1878 - July 23, 1930) was an aviation pioneer and founder of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, now part of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. - Alberto Santos-Dumont
Alberto Santos-Dumont (20 July 1873 - 23 July 1932) was an early pioneer of aviation. He was born, grew up, and died in Brazil. His contributions to aviation took place while he was living in Paris, France. Santos-Dumont designed, built, and flew the first practical dirigible balloons. In doing so he became the first person to demonstrate that routine, controlled flight was possible. - Otto Lilienthal
Otto Lilienthal (23 May, 1848 - 10 August, 1896), the German "Glider King," was a pioneer of human aviation. He was the first person to make repeated successful gliding flights. He followed an experimental approach first established earlier in the century by Sir George Cayley. Newspapers and magazines in many countries published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, … - Steve Fossett
James Stephen Fossett (born April 22, 1944, in Jackson, Tennessee) is a American aviator and adventurer known for his appetite to set world records. Fossett, who made his fortune in the American financial services industry, is best known for his five world record non-stop circumnavigations of the Earth: as a long-distance solo balloonist, as a sailor, and as a solo airplane pilot. Fossett has set 116 records in five different sports, 76 of which still stand. - Igor Sikorsky
Igor Ivanovich (or Ihor Ivanovych) Sikorsky (25 May, 1889 - 26 October, 1972) was a pioneer of aviation who designed the first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft and the first successful helicopter of the most common configuration (single main rotor tail rotor). - Lawrence Hargrave
Lawrence Hargrave was an engineer, explorer, astronomer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer. - Louis Blériot
Louis Blériot was a French inventor and engineer. In 1909 he achieved the first flight over a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft when he crossed the English Channel. - Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf (Count) von Zeppelin was a German aircraft manufacturer, the founder of the Zeppelin airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany). - Gustave Whitehead
Gustave Albin Whitehead, born Gustav Albin Weisskopf, was a German-American aviation pioneer. He reportedly made powered flights in the U.S. in a winged aircraft of his own design and construction more than two years before the Wright brothers made their first powered flights at Kitty Hawk. - Mike Melvill
Michael Winston "Mike" Melvill (born November 1941) is one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites. Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne on its first flight past the edge of space, flight 15P on June 21, 2004, thus becoming the first commercial astronaut and the 433rd person to go into space. He was also the pilot on SpaceShipOne's flight 16P, the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition. - Richard Pearse
Richard William Pearse, a New Zealand farmer and inventor, performed pioneering experiments in aviation. Pearse appears to have successfully flown and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, some nine months before the Wright brothers. The documentary evidence to support such a claim remains open to interpretation, however, and he does not appear to have developed his aircraft to match the Wrights' achievement of sustained flight. - Henri Fabre
Henri Fabre (born in Marseille on 29 November 1882, died in 1984) was a French aviator and the inventor of "Le Canard", the first seaplane in History. Henri Fabre was born into a prominent family of shipowners in the city of Marseilles. He was educated in the Jesuit College of Marseilles, where he undertook advanced studies in sciences. He then studied intensively aeroplane and propeller designs. - Amy Johnson
Amy Johnson C.B.E. was a pioneering British aviatrix who was born in Kingston upon Hull. - Anthony Fokker
Anton Herman Gerard Fokker (April 6, 1890 - December 23, 1939) was a pioneer in aviation and a Dutch-American aircraft manufacturer. - Traian Vuia
Traian Vuia aka Trajan Vuia was a Romanian inventor, who designed and built the first self-propelling heavier-than-air aircraft. Traian Vuia was born in the village "Surducul Mic" (now part of Traian Vuia commune) in the Timiş county of the Kingdom of Hungary (now western Romania, near the border with Hungary). After the graduation of high-school in Lugoj in 1892, he enrolled in the Polytechnic University of Budapest, … - Harold Gatty
Harold Gatty (born 1903 in Campbell Town, Tasmania - died 1957 in Fiji) was an Australian navigator, inventor, and aviation pioneer. Charles Lindbergh called Gatty the "Prince of Navigators." In 1931, Gatty served as navigator, along with pilot Wiley Post, on the flight which set the record for aerial circumnavigation of the world, flying a distance of 15,747 miles (24,903 km) in a Lockheed Vega named the "Winnie Mae", in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes. - Karl Jatho
Karl Jatho (February 3, 1873 - December 8, 1933) was a German pioneer and inventor, performer and public servant of the city of Hanover. On August 18, 1903 he flew with his self-made motored gliding airplane 4 months before the first flight of the Wright Brothers. His first attempts he made with a plane having three lifting surfaces, but switched to two surfaces soon. They were modelled after the Zanonia seed, a seed that was known for its gliding capability. - Claude Grahame White
Claude Grahame White was an English pioneer of aviation, and the first to make a night flight, during the Daily Mail sponsored London to Manchester race in 1910. - Henri Coandă
Henri Marie Coandă was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer and the builder of world's first jet powered aircraft, the Coanda-1910. - Jean-Pierre Blanchard
Jean-Pierre Blanchard (7 July 1753 - 7 March 1809) was a French inventor, most remembered a pioneer in aviation and ballooning. Blanchard made his first successful balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, in a hydrogen gas balloon launched from the Champ de Mars. The first successful manned balloon flight took place only a few months earlier, on 21 November 1783, … - Grant McConachie
George William Grant McConachie (April 24, 1909 - June 29, 1965) was a Canadian bush pilot and businessman who became CEO of Canadian Pacific Airlines (CPA). Grant McConachie was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Calder, Alberta. He developed an interest in aviation as a teen and obtained a pilot's license at age twenty. Within a few years he was running his own small fleet of bush aircrafts including ski and float planes. - William T. Piper
William Thomas Piper Sr. (8 January 1881 Knapps Creek, New York U.S. - 15 January 1970, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania) was an American airplane manufacturer, and founder, eponym, and 1st president of Piper Aircraft Corporation 1929-1970. He graduated from Harvard University in 1903, and became known as "the Henry Ford of Aviation". The William T. Piper Memorial Airport in Lock Haven is named in his honor. - Aurel Vlaicu
Aurel Vlaicu was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot. - Eugene Burton Ely
Eugene Burton Ely (October 21 1886 - October 19, 1911) was an aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard aircraft take off and landing. Ely was born in Williamsburg, Iowa and raised in Davenport, Iowa. He attended Iowa State University, graduating in 1904. Following graduation, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he was active in the early days of the sales and racing of automobiles. He relocated to Portland, Oregon in early 1910, … - John Stringfellow
John Stringfellow (1799-1883) was born in Sheffield, England and is known for his work on the Aerial Steam Carriage with William Samuel Henson. Stringfellow worked in Chard, Somerset, England as a maker of bobbins and carriages for the lace industry. Together with Henson, he had ambitions of creating an international company, the Aerial Transit Company, with designs showing aeroplane travel in exotic locations like Egypt and China. - Louis Charles Breguet
Louis Charles Breguet (January 2, 1880 - May 4, 1955) was a French aircraft designer and builder, one of the early aviation pioneers. He was born in Paris. In 1905, with his brother Jacques, and under the guidance of Charles Robert Richet, he began work on a gyroplane (the forerunner of the helicopter) with flexible wings. It achieved the first ascent of a vertical-flight aircraft with a pilot in 1907. His first aircraft, which he built in 1909, … - Thomas Scott Baldwin
Thomas Scott Baldwin was a U.S. Army Major and pioneer balloonist. He was the first American to descend from a balloon in a parachute. - Olive Ann Beech
Olive Ann Beech (September 25, 1904 - 6 July, 1993) was a U.S. aviation pioneer and businesswoman. With her husband, Walter Herschel Beech, she founded the Beech Aircraft Company. During World War II, she ran the company during her husband's illness. After her husband's death in 1950, she continued running the company, and was the driving force for the company's later expansion. On the company's merger into Raytheon, she joined Raytheon's main board. - Raymonde de Laroche
Raymonde de Laroche (22 August 1886 - 18 July 1919), born Elise Raymonde Deroche, was a French aviator and the first woman to receive a pilot's licence. - Alliott Verdon Roe
Sir Edwin Alliot Verdon Roe was a pioneer British pilot and aircraft manufacturer, and founder in 1910 of the Avro company. He was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands) and the first Englishman to fly an all British machine a year later, on Hackney Marshes. Roe was born in Patricroft, Eccles, now in the City of Salford. The son of a doctor, he left home when he was 14 to go to Canada where he spent a year working odd jobs. - Russel Merrill
Russel ("Russ") Hyde Merrill was an Alaskan aviation pioneer. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he became a U.S. Navy pilot during World War I, becoming Naval Aviator No. 469. After the war, he received a chemistry degree from Cornell University and pursued a career as a civil engineer. On April 5, 1925, he responded to an advertisement offering a flying boat for sale in Portland, Oregon, where he lived at the time. This started his career as a bush pilot, and on May 26, … - John Wise
John Wise was a pioneer in the field of ballooning. He made over 400 flights during his lifetime and was responsible for several innovations in balloon design. - Zhuge Liang
Zhuge Liang was one of the greatest Chinese strategists of the Three Kingdoms period, as well as a statesman, engineer, scholar, and inventor. Zhuge is an uncommon two-character compound family name. His name (or even just his surname) has become synonymous with intelligence and tactics in Chinese culture. - Louis Paulhan
.Louis Paulhan, French pilot who in 1910 flew the "Le Canard", the world's first seaplane designed by Henri Fabre. - Marie Marvingt
Marie Marvingt was a French athlete, mountaineer, and aviator, and the most decorated woman in the history of France. She won numerous prizes for her sporting achievements and was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. She was a record-breaking balloonist, a pioneering aviator and during World War I became the first woman to fly combat missions as a bomber pilot. She was also a qualified nurse, specializing in aviation medicine, … - Igo Etrich
Ignaz "Igo" Etrich (born December 25, 1879 in Ober Altstadt (Bohemia / Austria-Hungary) near Trautenau (today: Horni stare mesto near Trutnov, Czech Republic); died February 4, 1967 Salzburg, Austria), Austrian flight pioneer, pilot and fixed-wing aircraft developer.
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