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Albert Seigman Heinrich

"I suppose we were a little ahead of our time," Albert Heinrich reminisced. "It was just the way we worked. We didn't really think we were doing so well at the time."

The Heinrich brothers, Albert and Arthur, were very much ahead of their time and their engineering genius--for that is unquestionably what it was--created some of the most important and invigorating designs seen in the first dozen years of flight. While most of their contemporaries followed the designs of the Wrights and Curtiss, the Heinrichs pioneered in monoplane structures; while the crowd just built machines that would fly, the brothers constructed aircraft of meticulous engineering craftsmanship.  (Arthur passed away in 1958.)

The first Heinrich plane was built in the shops of their 19-acre flying field at Baldwin, Long Island, in the spring of 1910, and the brothers then taught themselves to fly. In the decade that followed, they built 15 types of important single-wing and biplane craft, established flying schools and experimented widely with military designs for the U.S. and allied powers. In early 1917, Albert became one of the founding members of the newly-formed Aircraft Manufacturers Association.

From 1920 through 1933, Albert was associated with a number of aeronautical engineering and aircraft manufacturing firms, including Bendix, where he was a research engineer.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Albert Seigman Heinrich: born New York City, October 27, 1889.

[[image No. 76 - black & white photograph of Albert Heinrich flying in a monoplane]]

[[image No. 77 - black & white photograph of Albert Heinrich and his brother with students of the flying school]]

[[image No. 78 - black & white photograph of Albert Heinrich in flying attire]]

[[caption]] Albert Heinrich in a 1914 outfit of turned-back cap and heavy sweater (78), at a time when he was flying one of the pioneer monoplanes designed by himself and his brother (76). The brothers and students with a 1913 flying school class, Baldwin, Long Island, left to right Kiebo Arai (from Japan), William, H. Sheahan, Albert Heinrich, Arthur Heinrich, unknown, and Frederick Jacobs(77). [[/caption]]

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