Speaker Notes by Steve Barton:
On Thursday Morning April 7th, Jon Fehrenbach, a retired Boeing engineer and docent at the Museum of Flight presented a fascinating history of the development of heavier than air manned flight from its inception to WW1. In the beginning, everyone in the “industry” was working on their own. Manned flight began with gliders and Otto Lilienthal who had over 200 glider flights prior to crashing for the last time in 1896.
Enter Wright Brothers, Wilber the thinker and Orvil the tinkerer,. in 1896 as well. They had a mission and kept at it changing history on December 17, 1903 at 10:35 AM. Orvil flew the 1st of 4 flights that day going 852 ft in 59 seconds. Future successes were the first oval in 1904, followed in 1905 with a figure 8 and the first 1 hour flight in 1907. In 1910 they flew over St Lewis at 50 MPH.
100+ years later, with over 100 years of development and buckets of technology, Alaska is having trouble even getting off the ground. Go figure!
Jon Fehrenbach is a retired engineer, having been a structural engineer and engineering manager at Boeing until his retirement in June 2014. Jon received his Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering, and his Masters Degree in Engineering, both from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. In a 35-year career at Boeing, Jon worked in airframe structures engineering on numerous programs on both the commercial side (727, 737, 777, 787 Programs) and the military side (B-2 Stealth Bomber, Joint Strike Fighter Proposal, F-22 Fighter Program). He specialized in the design of advanced carbon-fiber reinforced composites for airframe primary structure.
After retiring, Jon completed Docent training at the Museum of Flight and now works as a volunteer Docent at the Museum, chairs the Museum’s Docent Training Committee, and does presentations in the Puget Sound community for the Museum’s Speakers Bureau. He is also interested in supporting and promoting STEM-related education programs and initiatives. In his leisure time, Jon is a bicyclist (road bike/touring), pickleball player, and long-suffering Seattle sports fan. He enjoys reading, with aviation history, biographies, and other historical non-fiction currently taking up most of his reading list.