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Harry Frank Guggenheim

"Personally, I know of no one--no one--who has contributed more to the development and public acceptance of aviation than Harry Guggenheim," James H. Doolittle has said. The contributions have spanned two score years, amounted to tens of millions of dollars, and nurtured little projects into giant enterprises.

Young Guggenheim came into aviation in a manner few men could afford. In March, 1917, he purchased a hydroplane from Glenn Hammond Curtiss, took flying lessons, and then organized a Long Island naval aviation unit. Following his return from France, he enlisted his father in the cause of flight, and in 1925 funds were provided to establish the country's first Guggenheim School of Aeronautics, at New York University. In 1926 the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics was formed. Harry became its president, and promote, he did!

Within five years the Fund established other aeronautical engineering schools in Massachusetts, Georgia, Michigan, California, and Washington; established the first weather reporting service exclusively for passenger airplanes; organized competition for aerodynamic safety; and supported a host of unique engineering experiments, including instrument flying.

As present of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, he helped sponsor much of the pioneer research of Robert H. Goddard.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Harry Frank Guggenheim: born West End, N.J., August 23, 1890.

[[image No. 59 - black & white photograph of Harry Guggenheim and William Stout in front of airplane]]

[[image No. 60 - black & white photograph of Harry Guggenheim and others in front of airplane]]

[[caption]] Harry Guggenheim, left, and William B. Stout, designer for Ford TriMotor (59), at Detroit, Mich. The "Josephine Ford" in which Byrd, left, flew to North Pole, and Guggenheim with War Department secretaries (60), prior to Byrd's national tour sponsored by Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, Washington, C.D., Oct. 7, 1926. [[/caption]]

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