Transport: Turtle to Batwing

Few months ago the pinwheel brain of U. S. industry’s most whimsical and unpredictable inventor threw out another spark. Convinced that what the U. S. needs and wants is a good, low-cost, small plane, mop-haired, 59-year-old William Bushnell Stout decided to re-enter aviation. Already mocked-up last week in his faded yellow Stout Engineering Laboratories in Dearborn, Mich, was a snug two-seater slated for mass production at about $3,000. (Specifications: four cylinder, 75-h.p. motor, 450-mile cruising range, tricycle landing gear, controls so limited that the pilot will not be able to pull the ship high enough for a tail spin). By next spring, Inventor Stout announced, his new planes will be rolling off the assembly line at the rate of one a day.

An aviation pioneer, Inventor Stout comes of pioneering stock. Boldest invention of the American Revolution was his ancestor David Bushnell’s tiny submarine that resembled two tortoise shells glued together, was dubbed “Bushnell’s Turtle” (see p. 33). In 1919 U. S. airmen were shaking their heads over a contraption as outlandish as “Bushnell’s Turtle,” a fat monoplane that was mostly wing. To their surprise the “Batwing” not only established a new construction principle (internally braced wings), but became the first U. S. commercial monoplane. Thenceforth Inventor Stout, unlike his frustrated ancestor, found backers for other queer-sounding projects.

Born in Quincy, Ill., son of a Methodist minister, William Bushnell Stout early developed a talent for whittling ingenious gadgets. After studying engineering at the University of Minnesota, he left with $85 in his jeans, grubbed along as manual training instructor, toy designer, vaudevillian, journalist. In 1906 he married a Miss Alma Raymond, with his own deft hands built their St. Paul home and every stick of furniture in it, took a rattlebang honeymoon trip through Europe on a motorcycle.

Back in St. Paul young Stout, long a worshipper of such oldtime airmen as Octave Chanute and Glenn Curtiss, waded ear-deep into aviation. In 1922, heartened by the success of his crude “Batwing,” he drafted plans for the first all-metal commercial plane. To some 100 U. S. industrialists went Inventor Stout, asked them for $1,000 each. Said he: “You may never get your money back, but you’ll have $1,000 worth of fun.”

Many a bigwig forked up the ante, among them Henry Ford, who invited Inventor Stout to set up shop under his wing. As Ford protege, later as an independent, Inventor Stout: 1) built the famed Ford tri-motor plane, 2) organized one of the first commercial airlines (Detroit-Cleveland, Detroit-Chicago), 3) designed the “Scarab,” first U. S. rear-engine car on the market, 4) designed one of the first high-speed, gasoline-driven streamliners, 5) netted more than $1,000,000.