Born: 04/18/1870
Died: 03/22/1957
Inducted:
10/14/2000
At
the tender age of 12, A. P. Warner told his grandfather he
wanted to be an inventor. "Arthur, you are too late," his
grandfather replied. "Everything to be invented is invented,
and there is no use your wasting time in trying to make something
new."
Warner
obtained a limited education in electrical engineering and then
began inventing. His more notable inventions include the first
magnetic speedometer for automobiles and the electric brake.
He
formed the Warner Instrument Company in 1904 which later became the
Stewart-Warner Company. Later still he became president of the
Warner-Patterson Company and in 1955 was made chairman of the board.
Mr.
Warner was the first individual American to buy an airplane, one of
the first ten Americans to fly an airplane anywhere and the first
person to fly an airplane in Wisconsin.
Warner
would often tell a story of a lecture he had attended by a Harvard
mathematician. The professor proved conclusively that flight in a
heavier-than-air machine was a mathematical impossibility.
Author
Seth Shulman in his book, Unlocking the Sky described Warner's visit
to the Curtiss facility in Hammondsport, NY ... 'When Warner came to
the plant to make the sale, he remembers Curtiss' operation as
"little more than a shed with a few tools in it."
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AP Warner
(WAHF photo)
AP Warner at the controls of his
Curtiss pusher aircraft
(WAHF photo)
Early Birds of America marker at
location of Warner's first flight
(WAHF photo by Rose Dorcey)
Wisconsin Historical Marker at the
Morgan Farm, site of Warner's first flight
(WAHF photo by Rose Dorcey)
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