Bill Lear
William (Bill) Powell Lear (
June 26,
1902 –
May 14,
1978) was an
American inventor and
businessman. He is best known for founding the
Lear Jet Corporation, a manufacturer of business jets. He also developed the
8-track cartridge, an
audio tape system popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Lear was born in
Hannibal, Missouri as an only child. He later moved with his family to
Chicago, where he attended school up until the
eighth grade. He enlisted in the
United States Navy during
World War I, serving as a
radio operator. Lear had no formal education past the eigth grade other than the courses which he took in the navy.
In the 1920s, Lear and a partner, Elmer Wavering, invented the first practical
car radio, eventually selling their patents to the
Galvin Corporation (which would later become the
Motorola company). In 1930, Lear used his profits from the sale of his car radio patents to found Lear Developments, a company specializing in aerospace instruments and electronics. Lear developed radio direction finders,
autopilots, and the first fully automatic aircraft landing system. His "LearAvian" series of portable radios, which incorporated
radio direction finder circuits as well as
broadcast band coverage, were especially popular.
In 1941, Lear married his fourth wife
Moya Marie Olsen [
1], daughter of
Vaudeville comedian
John "Ole" Olsen.[
2]
Lear changed the name of Lear Developments to Lear, Incorporated and in 1949 opened a manufacturing facility in
Santa Monica, California.
In 1960, Lear moved to
Switzerland and founded the Swiss American Aviation Company. In 1962 he sold Lear Incorporated to the Siegler Corporation after failing to convince its board to go into the aircraft manufacturing business. That company thereafter was known as Lear Siegler. Bill Lear next moved to
Wichita,
Kansas to manufacture the
Lear Jet. On
October 7,
1963, Lear Jet started test flights on the
LearJet 23, the first mass produced business jet.
Lear died of
leukemia on May 14, 1978. At the time of his death, Lear's current project was the Model 2100 Learfan, a seven-passenger plane whose tail mounted propeller was powered by two turboprop engines.
Bill Lear and his wife,
Moya, had four children:
John, Shanda, David and Tina.
Lear developed the Lear Jet Stereo 8-track music tape cartridge in 1964 as an improvement of the 4-Track
Stereo-Pak tape cartridge (
Fidelipak) marketed by
Earl Muntz in California in 1962. It was a solution to the need for a convenient music source for his new business jets. The consumer version of players for these tapes first appeared in September 1965 in 1966 model Ford automobiles with
RCA and Lear offering the first pre-recorded Stereo 8 Music Cartridges.
The successful
Canadair Regional Jet is largely based on Lear's design for the LearStar 600, which
Canadair bought and turned into the
Canadair CL-600 Challenger business jet. Lear Jet was acquired in 1990 by
Bombardier Aerospace.
One of Lear's most innovative projects was his lastâ€"a revolutionary airplane called the
LearFan. The fuselage of this plane was made of lightweight
composite materials instead of the standard
aluminum material. It also featured an innovative "pusher" design, in which two
aircraft engines powered a single spinning
propeller blade that faced the rear of the aircraft.
The LearFan, though many years in development, was ultimately never completed. He begged his wife,
Moya Lear, to finish it, and with the help of investors, she attempted to do so. But the plane failed to obtain
FAA certification, and never made it into production. This was not due to FAA concern about its use of innovative materials; rather, because of concerns that even with two engines, the gear mechanism that powered the single propeller blade might fail. If it did, the plane would crash.
*Though he could be difficult to work for, William Lear reportedly had a good sense of humour. He named his daughter Shanda (Shanda Lear, as in "chandelier").
*Lear played a
bit part as a pilot in the 1967 film
In Like Flint*
MIT Inventor of the week*
Biography from The
National Aviation Hall of Fame*Boesen,Victor,(January, 1971).
They Said It Couldn't Be Done: The Incredible Story of Bill Lear,New York:Doubleday & Co., ISBN 038501841X
*Rashke,Richard,(1985).
Stormy genius: the life of aviation's maverick, Bill Lear,Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., DDC: 629.1300924,LCC: TL540, ISBN 0395353726
