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23-583: William Bushnell Stout developed the Stout Batwing , a cantilever blended-wing aircraft with the engine mounted internally. The pioneer aircraft in cantilever wings suffered from poor visibility with its top-mounted open cockpit. The follow-on aircraft, the Stout Batwing Limousine, would have a conventional fuselage and engine arrangement, and a tail mounted further aft. The all-wood cantilever wing did not need struts or braces, reducing parasitic drag on

46-752: A concept car for the Ford Motor Company to be shown at the Century of Progress Exhibition (1933-1934) in Chicago . Known as the "Briggs Dream Car", this was a streamlined rear-engined design, based on his previous work. Re-engineered as a front-engined car, this design was developed into the 1936 Lincoln-Zephyr . Tjaarda also designed an exhibition "Kitchen of Tomorrow" for Briggs in 1934. Tjaarda's son, Tom Tjaarda , also became an automotive designer, working mainly in Italy . This automobile biographical article

69-399: A Pullman Railplane and Club Car. He is also known as the originator of prefab housing and the sliding car seat. All of these innovations were modern in design, incorporating many features new in both appearance and function, features not yet available in vehicle design. Stout retired to Phoenix, Arizona , and died on March 20, 1956, four days after his 76th birthday. Stout self-published

92-653: A number of all-metal aircraft designs, which, like the earliest aircraft designs of Andrei Tupolev in the Soviet Union, was based on the pioneering work of Hugo Junkers . In February 1923, newspapers carried stories of the test flights of the Stout Air Sedan with Walter Lees as the pilot. In 1924 his company, the Stout Metal Airplane Company , was bought by the Ford Motor Company. Stout developed

115-465: A small booklet (15 pp.) of poems, circa 1936. Two of the poems were in the form of letters: On Receiving Word that Stan Knauss Was Joining the Air Corps (September 18, 1918) and On Stan Becoming a Father (December 4, 1930). His autobiography, So Away I Went! , was published in 1951. Stout is remembered for his engineering credo, "Simplicate and add more lightness." This would later become best known as

138-562: A thick-wing monoplane, and his design of an internally braced cantilevered wing improved the efficiency of aircraft. This led to the development of the famous "Batwing Plane" and the all-metal "Torpedo Plane" . After his career at Packard Motors, he left for Washington to serve as the advisor to the United States Aircraft Board. Stout developed an all-metal transport aircraft for mail use, the Stout 2-AT . His three engine follow-on,

161-681: A time. A second wing with more camber produced favorable results. The aircraft had an alarming "hunting" tendency when gliding that was fixed after 30–40 test flights. Stout mentioned in 1922 that his next example would be built out of metal. This aircraft was the first in a series by Stout that would later form the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company , building the Ford Trimotor . General characteristics Performance William Bushnell Stout William Bushnell Stout (March 16, 1880 – March 20, 1956)

184-585: The Stout 3-AT , was underpowered, and did not perform as well, leaving Stout out of the engineering role in his company newly acquired by Ford. The redesigned 3-AT did form the basis for the popular Ford Trimotor aircraft. In August 1925, Stout inaugurated Stout Air Services , which operated the first regularly scheduled airline in the United States. Stout also built the Liberty-powered all-metal monoplanes to initiate this service. Later, between 1928 and 1932,

207-648: The University of Minnesota , being forced to quit due to extreme eye problems. He married Alma Raymond in 1906. Stout was interested in mechanics, especially aeronautics, founding the Model Aero Club of Illinois. In 1907 he became Chief Engineer for the Schurmeir Motor Truck Company and in 1912, he became automobile and aviation editor for the Chicago Tribune . In the same year he founded Aerial Age ,

230-636: The Stout Engineering Company in Dearborn, Michigan , complete with a research section and later built the prototype Stout Scarab car in 1932. In 1934 he founded the Stout Motor Car Company. The "beetle-like" Scarab featured an all-aluminum tubular airframe covered with aluminum skin, with the engine compartment at the rear, a sealed storage compartment in front of a passenger compartment with reclining aircraft-type seats. The front or nose of

253-587: The Stout engineering laboratory to Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation becoming the Stout Research Division of Consolidated. He was named the director of Convair 's research division through World War II. While at Consolidated, Stout promoted three designs for postwar production, including a flying car using a Spratt wing. Stout's other innovations included the Skycar , an automobile/airplane hybrid and

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276-619: The adopted maxim of Colin Chapman of Lotus Cars . It actually originated with Stout's designer Gordon Hooton . William B. Stout Middle School in Dearborn, Michigan bears his name. John Tjaarda Johan "Jan" Tjaarda (1897–1962), later known as John Tjaarda van Sterkenburg , was a Dutch product and automotive designer and stylist in the United States . Tjaarda was born in 1897 in Arnhem , as

299-528: The aircraft. The pilot had side windows and a wing cut-out for forward vision. Stout acquired financing for the project from Robert Stranahan of the Champion Spark Plug Company . Production started in Detroit , Michigan . The conventional geared aircraft is all-wood, with veneer wood skins. The propeller was mounted through a forward radiator. The exhaust header stack turned upward, projecting above

322-544: The airline flew passengers and Ford cargo between Dearborn, Chicago and Cleveland. In 1929, Stout sold Stout Air Services to United Airlines. After the Great Depression in 1929 reduced sales of the Trimotor aircraft, Stout left Ford in 1930. Although no longer with Ford, he continued to operate his Stout Engineering Laboratory. Stout also invested in the short-lived Wichita, Kansas based Buckley Aircraft Company , developing

345-536: The all-aluminum Buckley LC-4 . In 1930 Stout said: "Aviation in the U.S. has been stagnating for two years. We are all copying. Aviation has shown no progress ... comparable to that made in radio and talking pictures. Think how many copies have been made of the plane Colonel Lindbergh used on his flight across the Atlantic ... of other famous planes. None of us are building the plane that the public wants to buy, and that proves we are standing still." In 1943 Stout sold

368-801: The first aviation magazine ever published in the United States. He was also a contributor to the Minneapolis Times under the pen name, "Jack Knieff." In 1914, Stout became Chief Engineer of the Scripps-Booth Automobile Company. His "Cyclecar" had caught the attention of Alvan MacCauley who subsequently brought Stout to Packard Motors in Detroit. He had become General Sales Manager of the Packard Motor Car Company and in 1916, when they started an aviation division, they asked Stout to become its first Chief Engineer. In 1919 he started

391-611: The son of Henriette Elisabeth Thieme and the physician Johannes Jan Tjaarda. Tjaarda trained in aeronautical design in the United Kingdom and later served as a pilot in the Dutch Air Force . After emigrating to the United States in 1923, he changed his name to John and worked in custom coachbuilding in Hollywood . Around 1926, Tjaarda was hired to design bodies by coachbuilders Locke and Company. The best-known of their factory customs

414-496: The suspension using compressed air, and push button electric doors. When the vehicle was made public in 1946, Stout picked the name Forty-Six for that year. Some firms considered producing the Forty-Six, but as Stout stated he doubted there would be much of a market for a $ 10,000 car, the estimated price if it had been mass-produced. Stout's aviation career began as a result of his success in his automotive efforts. He began to build

437-402: The top of the fuselage. The fuel tanks are wing mounted. The wing has a chord that spans most of the length of the fuselage. The first aircraft was flown with an airfoil designed for speed rather than lift. Test pilot Bert Acosta said the aircraft did not have enough lift and visibility. Bert did claim the plane was stable enough to fly with his hands off the controls for several minutes at

460-467: The vehicle contained the spare tire. Only nine Scarabs were ever built and although advanced, the public never appreciated the innovative features of the vehicles. In the mid-1930s, Stout, in co-operation with L.B. Kalb of Continental Motors, a major manufacture of lightweight air cooled aircraft engines, did some extensive research and pre-production development into rear engine drive automobiles which were powered by aircraft engines. Stout even commissioned

483-446: The well known Dutch auto designer John Tjaarda to design some streamlined car bodies, although none of the car designs ever reached production. In the last years of World War II, Stout, in co-operation with Owen-Corning, began what was called Project Y to build a one-off car for evaluation of ideas like a frame-less fiberglass body, belt drive rear wheel drive, a suspension which kept the vehicle from leaning into turns by adjusting

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506-696: Was a pioneering American inventor, engineer, developer and designer whose works in the automotive and aviation fields were groundbreaking. Known by the nickname "Bill", Stout designed an aircraft that eventually became the Ford Trimotor and was an executive at the Ford Motor Company . William Bushnell "Bill" Stout was born March 16, 1880, in Quincy, Illinois . He graduated from the Mechanic Arts High School , in St. Paul, Minnesota , in 1898. He then attended Hamline University , and transferred in his second year to

529-600: Was a two-door phaeton called the Touralette, designed earlier by Tjaarda for himself, which Chrysler offered on their L-80 Imperial chassis in 1927–1928. Tjaarda also worked for a while with the original GM Art and Colour Section under famous designer Harley Earl . During the 1920s, he worked on a series of streamlined monocoque designs, known as the "Sterkenburg series", before joining the Briggs Manufacturing Company as chief of body design. There he developed

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