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Stanley Yale Beach

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Stanley Yale Beach
Stanley Yale Beach
Born(1877-07-09)July 9, 1877
Stratford, Connecticut
DiedJuly 13, 1955(1955-07-13) (aged 78)
New York City
EducationYale University
Occupation(s)Editor, banker, aircraft builder, airships builder
Known forearly backer of Gustave Whitehead
Children3
ParentFrederick C. Beach
RelativesAlfred Ely Beach,grandfather
Moses S. Beach, granduncle
Moses Yale Beach, great-grandfather
FamilyYale

Stanley Yale Beach (1877 – 1955) was a wealthy aviation pioneer, who was an early financier of Gustave Whitehead, who claimed to have made powered controlled flight before the Wright brothers.[1][2][3][4] He was among the first technically trained men to be involved in dynamic flight in the United States, and was an early automobilist, following the beginnings of the development of the automobile industry as Automobile Editor of Scientific American, their family scientific magazine.[5][6]

Early life

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Wayne Cars, by Wayne Automobile Co., Stanley Yale Beach was a buyer of their first model in 1903[7]

Stanley Yale Beach was born in Stratford, Connecticut, on July 9, 1877, to Frederick Converse Beach, editor and co-proprietor of Scientific American, and Margaret A. Gilbert, members of the Yale family.[8]

Beach's paternal grandfather was patent lawyer Alfred Ely Beach, who is most known for his invention of New York's first subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, and for his patent agency Munn & Co., with customers including Thomas Edison, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Alexander Graham Bell.

Beach's's great-grandfather was Moses Yale Beach, the cofounder of the New York Sun, which was at the time the largest newspaper in America and the pioneer on crime reporting.

His granduncle was N.Y. abolitionist politician Moses S. Beach, who ran the paper and the Boston Daily Times, supporting the candidancy of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, and his cousin Emma, married to military camouflage expert Abbott Handerson Thayer of the Thayer family.

Career

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See also: Gustave Whitehead § Stanley Yale Beach
Antoinette monoplanes, built by Antoinette Company, similar to Beach's design with foldable wings.[6]
Woolworth Tower, seat of Scientific American in 1915, where Stanley worked for his family as Automobile and Aeronautic Editor

Beach attended Yale Sheffield Scientific School like his father, and afterward developed a lifetime interest in aeronautics, engineering, and inventing.[9] He acquired and ran a single-cylinder Thomas 1903 from the Thomas Motor Company across the country, which was the same year Ford Motors was founded. He acquired in 1904 the newly built two-cylinder Wayne from the Wayne Automobile Company, and traveled most of the southwestern part of New York State with the Wayne.[7]

This company was working with Henry Ford at his beginnings and had their factory next door to his in Detroit.[10] They later merged with the Northern Manufacturing Company and the E-M-F Company, becoming the second largest American car manufacturer after Ford.[7]

Beach began designing airplane engines on his own in 1903. He tried to build a high-speed boat with an airplane engine, and designed a biplane with Gustave Whitehead.[7][11] [unreliable source?] He became half-assignor of Whitehead's aeroplane (a glider) patent and signed it as a witness.[12] He also designed monoplanes similar in design to the Antoinette, built by Antoinette manufacturer, and the Blériot XI by Blériot Aéronautique with foldable wings.[6]

Beach described the plane[clarification needed] as a machine that was built after the model of a bird or bat, with a 10-horsepower engine, and the body of the framework was referred by Scientific American as a bat-like aeroplane and a bat machine, which Whitehead claimed flew in 1901.[13] These claims preceded the first flight achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903, and have been widely rejected by aviation historians. [14][15] Beach has been quoted as later stating that "I do not believe that any of [Whitehead's] machines ever left the ground".[16]

Beach worked in the Beach Building on 125 East 23rd Street, Manhattan, but also worked for Scientific American Magazine, the family business, as their "Aeronautic Editor". He wrote numerous articles on automobiles, motor boats and flying machines.[7]

The company was seated at 37 Park Row, and later at 261 Broadway, and finally at 361 Broadway.[17] A few years before his father's death, in 1915, they moved the headquarters to the famous Woolworth Building in Manhattan at 233 Broadway, one of the first skyscrapers, and the tallest building in the world at the time. The building had been finished in 1913, two years earlier, and Nikola Tesla had moved in by 1914.[17][18]

Enterprises

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Whitehead's Albatross-type glider

Beach then founded his own enterprises. His businesses were the Beach Engineering Company, the Beach Laboratories Company, the Scientific Aeroplane Company, and the Beach-Basenach Airship Company of America. He also founded associations such as the Aero Science Club, and co founded the Aeronautic Society of New York.[3]

He became a member of the Aero Club of America, along with Vincent Astor, and was one of the original members of the club, covering their first event in 1906.[19] He later created the Scientific Aeroplane Company of Stratford, a Connecticut airplane manufacturer that proposed to build machines for fairs and other amusement enterprises.[20]

In 1910, Beach also made an impact on the aeroplane world by inventing and patenting the first aeroplane with a gyroscope attachment for stability.[21][better source needed] Around that time, with his Scientific Aeroplane Company of New York, he negotiated with the British government to sell them nine huge triplanes capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in one flight, which was regarded with skepticism by aviation experts.[21]

With Charles F. Willard of the Lowe, Willard & Fowler Engineering Company, they've built the Beach-Willard Monoplane, from which they received patents for having invented the connection of planes or wings to a triangular body, enforceable in France, England and America.[22][23]

In 1915, Beach competed with three other companies to try to win the contract for the construction of the first United States Navy airship, the Project DN-1, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time.[20] The competitors were the American Dirigible Balloon Syndicate of New York, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Ohio, and the Connecticut Aircraft Company of Connecticut.[24]

He worked with the Germans, trying to sell airships in America and secure a trans-Atlantic mail contract. When Andrew Carnegie created his new Endowment for International Peace in 1910, Stanley Yale Beach suggested using a portion of the capital to develop wireless power airships to end and prevent future wars.[25]

Through his enterprise, he also contacted in 1930 the young film producer Howard Hughes, in an attempt to sell him an airship which would allow Hughes to travel to Europe in complete privacy and secrecy.[3]

Legacy

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Whitehead's No.21 airplane, Stanley Yale Beach is on the left

His personal correspondences for business interests are part of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Correspondents included Charles Nungesser and François Coli, the aviators who tried the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York.

It also included correspondences with General Billy Mitchell, the father of the United States Air Force, and Nikolaus Basenach, partner of Major general Hans Georg Friedrich Groß, the first builders of German military airships.[3]

Stanley Yale Beach married September 15, 1897, in Mount Vernon, New York, to Helen Curtiss, daughter of Alfred Curtiss.[26] They had 3 children together : Frederick Converse Jr., Alfred Birdseye and Margaret Stanley Beach.

Beach Jr. was Editor of the Boston University Law Review, Deputy Judge of Stratford Town Court, and Prosecuting Attorney with a law business.[27]

He was also a Freemason of the American Legion, and served in the Ambulance Company, Field Hospital, during World War I

Beach died July 13, 1955, at the age of 78 in New York. His father Frederick C. Beach had given him a trust fund of $500,000 in 1914; about 350 million dollars in 2024 money in relation to GDP,[28] and was the owner and secretary-treasurer of Scientific American at the time.[29][30]

Beach's great-grandfather, Moses Yale Beach, had a fortune of about $300,000 in 1846, or about 3.7 billion dollars in relation to GDP,[31] and was among the wealthiest citizens of New York.[32]

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References

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  1. ^ Sues Rich Inventor for Divorce, Alimony, Manchester Evening Herald, Wednesday, June 1, 1927, Vol. Xll, no. 207, p. 1
  2. ^ Jackson, Paul (2013). Jackson, Paul (ed.). "Executive Overview: Justice delayed is justice denied". Jane's All the World's Aircraft 2013. Washington, DC: Macdonald and Jane's: 8–10.
  3. ^ a b c d Archive of Stanley Yale Beach, aviation pioneer
  4. ^ Whitehead, The “Who Flew First” Debate, Flightjournal.com, Maj. William J. O'Dwyer, USAF Reserve, p. 55
  5. ^ Beach, Stanley, Archives at Yale, Stanley Yale Beach papers, Number: GEN MSS 802, 1911-1948
  6. ^ a b c Aircraft, New York, Lawson Publishing Company, Vol. 4, No. 5, New York, July, 1913, p. 101
  7. ^ a b c d e Beach, Stanley, Stanley Yale Beach, Decennial Record, Yale University, Sheffield Scientific School, Class of 1898, p. 6-7
  8. ^ Rodney Horace Yale (1908). "Yale Genealogy and History of Wales. The British Kings and Princes. Life of Owen Glyndwr. Biographies of Governor Elihu Yale". Archive.org. Milburn and Scott company. p. 237.
  9. ^ Stanley Yale Beach papers
  10. ^ Magazine, 1910 E-M-F Touring, An Infant Titan Snuffed out by Mistrust
  11. ^ History by Contract, O'Dwyer and Randolph (1978), p. 124
  12. ^ United States Patent Office, Gustave Whitehead, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Assignor of One-Half to Stanley Yale Beach, of Stratford, Connecticut
  13. ^ Scientific American, 15. Dec. 1906, p.447
  14. ^ Gibbs-Smith, Charles H. (2003). Aviation: an Historical Survey. London: NMSI. pp. 286–7. ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
  15. ^ Crouch, Tom (2016). "The Flight Claims of Gustave Whitehead" (PDF). Journal of Aeronautical History. 6: 1–9. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
  16. ^ SCHLENOFF, DANIEL C. (8 July 2014). "Scientific American Debunks Claim Gustave Whitehead Was "First in Flight"". Scientific American. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
  17. ^ a b Scientific American, on the Move 170 Years, 11 locations—A map of Scientific American's wanderings around Manhattan
  18. ^ Nikola Tesla's - All Published + Declassified Military Scientific Papar Abstracts, FBI Documentation and More, p. 192
  19. ^ Whitehead, The “Who Flew First” Debate, Flightjournal.com, Maj. William J. O'Dwyer, USAF Reserve, p. 52
  20. ^ a b Aerial Age, Volume 1
  21. ^ a b New-York tribune. volume, August 30, 1915, Page 4
  22. ^ Aeronautics, The American Magazine of Aerial Locomotion, Vol. 5, No. 1, July 2009, p. 14-15
  23. ^ American Magazine of Aeronautics, Volumes 5 à 7, p. 98
  24. ^ DN-1: The US Navy’s First Airship, The Connecticut Aircraft Company and the DN-1
  25. ^ New-York tribune. [volume], December 25, 1910, Page 4, Image 18
  26. ^ Bridgeport-City Trust Co. v. Beach, 119 Conn. 131, 174 A. 308 (Conn. 1934), Supreme Court of Connecticut, July 27, 1932
  27. ^ Trinity College Bulletin, 1940-1941 (Necrology)
  28. ^ "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount - 1790 to Present". MeasuringWorth.com. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
  29. ^ Stanley Yale Beach: Trust fund is $500,000, The New York TImes, Tuesday, January 26, 1926, p. 29
  30. ^ Beach Will Ignores Wishes of Her Son, The New York Times, Friday, December 30, 1932, p. 19
  31. ^ "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount - 1790 to Present". MeasuringWorth.com. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
  32. ^ Moses Yale Beach (1855-05-22). "The Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of the City of New York, Page 4 and 29". Sun office. Retrieved 2022-09-05.
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