Comments on: Building AMERICA’S Largest Plane (Jul, 1930)

By: Lin

Lin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:15:30 +0000

Lawson was an advanced thinker. People often make fun of things that they don’t understand. Anyone who calls him a kook does so because they are not very informed. Much of what he advocated in his later years as a writer reads as if it could have been written today. IE: His benefactor “Stealing America” demonstrates that nothing much has changed as far as the financiers running our government and the dire straights of our economic problems of today. I’ve read about the Mysterious Midnight flight that they claim was a disaster, unfortunately, what is omitted from any information on that flight is that he realized it was necessary to have lighting on a runway and was the first to implement that. Perhaps because he was also responsible for lighting in baseball parks earlier in his career. Thus night baseball.

By: Eliyahu

Eliyahu — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:41:30 +0000

I wonder where the reserve motors were to be kept, and how they went about swapping one out in mid-flight? “All passengers will please report to the lower deck to help the mechanic change the number three engine…”

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:29:25 +0000

I like that mechanic standing in the prop wash tinkering with the engine. Wonder what OSHA would have thought about that? Hope he doesn’t get too distracted by those small planes buzzing around the wings.

Rick

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:24:49 +0000

There’s a fascinating first-hand account of the first and second Lawson airliners at

http://web.archive.org/web/200.....rliner.htm

from an unfortunately defunct website. It would have made a great movie, much like “Tucker: The Man and His Dream”, and Lawson and Tucker actually sound like they were very similar guys…

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:31:24 +0000

Love the comfy armchair in the cockpit!

By: StanFlouride

StanFlouride — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:31:14 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lawson
Considered the father of the airliner
Lawsonomy-
In the 1920s, he promoted health practices including vegetarianism and claimed to have found the secret of living to 200. He also developed his own highly unusual theories of physics, according to which such concepts as “penetrability”, “suction and pressure” and “zig-zag-and-swirl” were discoveries on par with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.[3] He published numerous books on these concepts, all set in a distinctive typography. Lawson repeatedly predicted the worldwide adoption of Lawsonian principles by the year 2000.
He also developed, during the Great Depression, the populist economic theory of “Direct Credits”, according to which banks are the cause of all economic woe, the oppressors of both capital and labour. Lawson believed that the government should replace banks as the provider of loans to business and workers.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:17:54 +0000

Apparently designed but never built http://www.aviationhalloffamew.....lawson.htm

He became a bit of a kook afterward and invented Lawsononomy. This quote should provide some perspective:
When I look into the vastness of space and see the marvelous workings of its contents… I sometimes think I was born ten or twenty thousand years ahead of time.

– Alfred Lawson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....#Lawsonomy