Zig-Zag-and-Swirl: Alfred W. Lawson's Quest for Greatness

4. Aircraft Industry Builder

4 AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY BUILDER The year 1908 was an auspicious one in the infancy of American aviation. On July 4 Glenn Curtiss was awarded the Scientific American trophy for achieving a one-mile flight in his plane "June Bug" at Hammondsport , New York. Down at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 9 Orville Wright made the first public demonstrations of flight in one of the Wrights' airplanes, remaining in the air a little under one hour in the morning and a little over one hour in the afternoon. Less than two weeks later, on September 21, his brother Wilbur stayed in the air for slightly more than ninety minutes at Le Mans, France. And in November of that same year the first issue of Fly, the National Aeronautic Magazine hit the newsstands of the United States. In a lifetime studded with bold and chancy undertakings, Lawson's founding of Fly stands out as one of his most audacious . It appears all the more so, too, when one recalls that less than six months earlier, Lawson was knee-deep in the promotion of a third m~or baseball league. However, these two astoundingly disparate projects had at least one thing in common : when the Union League of Professional Base Ball Clubs of America folded, Lawson merely adapted its headquarters in the Betz Building in Philadelphia for use as Fly's editorial offices. Fly was not absolutely the first American aviation journal, but it probably was the earliest to be aimed at a general audience and to make heavier-than-air flight its AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY BUILDER 61 main focus. Inasmuch as only three Americans had yet flown in airplanes , however, the market prospects for such a journal must have appeared dim to almost everyone but Lawson and his partner John F. Kelley. Presumably the two partners had to supply their own initial funding, for who else would have put money into so questionable a venture? If this line of thought is correct, then it suggests that Lawson must indeed have made good earnings in his baseball activities. Nothing is known about Kelley, but this can be said about his partner, who also was editor of the new magazine: Lawson had no firsthand knowledge of aviation, was not a pilot, engineer, or mechanic, had only a rather unpromising novel to his credit as a writer, and knew nothing about publishing or editing. The inevitable didn't happen, however. An announcement in the second issue of Fly that the partnership of Lawson and Kelley had been succeeded by a corporation, the Aero Publishing Company, was followed in subsequent issues by sales pitches to the general public to buy shares in the new corporation (capitalized at $50,000). Whether many, or any, did so is not known, but that Fly stayed in business is certain. At the end of nearly one year of publication, Lawson reported a monthly circulation of 6,000 copies, not a very large base for a magazine selling at only ten cents a copy. However, over that same time, the number of display advertisers steadily increased, as did the proportion of advertisements in the magazine purchased by national firms. After editing Fly for a little more than a year, Lawson sold his interest in the magazine. Moving to New York City, he proceeded to bring out another magazine, Aircraft, whose first issue appeared in March, 1910. Why he did this is not known, but possibly one reason was an eagerness to exploit the word "aircraft," which Lawson always claimed to have coined. (Rare, earlier instances of the word are, in fact, on record, but Lawson can legitimately take the credit for making it a commonplace term.) Under Lawson's editorship for the next five years, Aircraft became not only a commercial success but an authoritative voice for early American aviation. Even before the end of his first year, Lawson reported , the monthly circulation of Aircraft had reached 14,000 copies. Even a quick thumb-through of those early issues of Fly and Aircraft yields strong hints as to why the magazines succeeded: aimed at both The cover of the first issue of Lawson's first aviation magazine. AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY BUILDER 63 the general reader and the flying enthusiast, Lawson's magazines were interesting, informative, well written, and well illustrated. Their pages contained controversy, such as rival claims by early contenders to priority in aircraft invention and an ongoing debate of...