It will probably not have escaped the attention of American readers of this column over the past six months that much of the history of aviation during the first half of the 20th century was written by the French, British and Germans. America took the first step when Orville and Wilbur Wright flew their Flyer on Dec. 17, 1903, but many of the subsequent advances, achievements and records were logged by people and companies beyond America’s shores. This began to turn around after the end of World War II, as the U.S. military-industrial might that had provided the tools for victory redirected its efforts and newfound skills and knowledge toward equipping the world with ever more capable flying machines for commerce and defense. By the 1960s America’s course toward dominating the aerospace industry was set firm. American jetliners and business and personal aircraft proliferated to satisfy the worldwide market for travel and recreation, and U.S. military aircraft made more leaps, fueled by the Cold War and the Vietnam War.

William Powell “Bill” Lear turned his flair for developing new concepts to the business jet when he founded Lear Jet in 1962. A high-school dropout, Lear made the first practical car radio in 1932 and later turned his attention to aircraft electronics. In 1950 he won the Collier Trophy for producing (in 1946 under the corporate auspices of Lear Siegler) the first lightweight autopilot for jet aircraft–creating one of the ups in the many ups and downs of his wealth. In the 1950s he spent some time in Switzerland and came across a design for a fighter aircraft (the single-seat FFA P-1604) that he used as the basis for the Lear Jet (it was two words initially), which first flew in October 1963 after 13 months of furiously paced work at Lear’s Wichita headquarters. Lear personally signed off on each and every component of the airplane, weighing each part and having his engineers justify every ounce of structure. “I’m the board of directors around here,” the mercurial Lear would remind his team, “and every five minutes I have a board meeting.”