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Charles Lanier Lawrance was born in Lenox, Massachussets, United States, the older of two children and only son of Francis Cooper Lawrance and his first wife, Sarah Eggleston (Lanier) Lawrance; he had a younger half sister. His father, who came of a well-to-do family, was a graduate of Yale's Sheffield Scientific School and the Columbia Law School, but never practiced his profession. The Lawrances lived in New York City.
Charles attended the Groton (Massachussets) School and received the B. A. degree from Yale in 1905. Later he studied architecture at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He received his diploma in 1914.
After Yale University Lawrance joined a new automobile firm that went bankrupt by the financial panic of 1907. He then went to Paris, where he did research in aeronautical engineering at the Eiffel Laboratory.
On his return to the United States, Lawrance resumed his automotive interests but soon turned to aeronautics. He designed an experimental air-cooled engine with two opposed cylinders and in 1917 formed the Lawrance Aero-Engine Company to develop it. With support from the navy, he next developed a three-cylinder engine and began work on a nine-cylinder, 200-horse-power engine (together with a slightly less powerful version for the army).
Completed in 1921, the Lawrance J-1 later came to be regarded as the prototype of all modern radial air-cooled engines. The navy was especially interested in Lawrance's engine because of its advantage for aircraft carrier operations. Its lack of a complicated liquid cooling system made it lighter in weight, thus allowing shorter takeoffs, a better rate of climb, and, most important, easier maintenance, factors which more than compensated for the slightly lower cruising speed resulting from the drag caused by the engine's exposed cylinders. Ease of maintenance also made the air-cooled engine attractive for commercial service. After an initial order for fifty engines in 1921, the navy's Bureau of Aeronautics ordered sixty more over the next two years.
Lawrance's company, however, lacked the capacity to manufacture on this scale, and the navy, in order to ensure an adequate supply, sought to induce the two major engine manufacturers, the Wright Aeronautical Corporation and the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, to compete with Lawrance in its production. Both companies balked, but when the navy refused to purchase any more of Wright's liquid-cooled Hispano-Suiza engines, Wright bought Lawrance's company in 1923 and began production of his air-cooled engine. Lawrance's 1921 engine thus became the ancestor of the Wright series of radial air-cooled engines, including the "Whirlwind, " which powered Charles A. Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis in 1927, and the 710-horsepower "Cyclone, " which powered Douglas Aircraft's DC series in the early 1930's.
With the purchase of his firm in 1923, Lawrance joined the Wright company as a vice-president. He moved up to the presidency in 1925 when Frederick B. Rentschler left to found the Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Corporation. Lawrance represented the aircraft industry before the Morrow Board of 1925, which laid the groundwork for the nation's first systematic aviation policy and led to establishment of the Bureau of Air Commerce.
He was elected president of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce in 1931. Meanwhile, in 1929, the Wright company merged with its old rival, Curtiss, to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, with Lawrance as vice-president of the new combination. He was not happy with the merger, however, and resigned in 1930 to form the Lawrance Engineering and Research Corporation (later the Lawrance Aeronautical Corporation) in Linden, New Jersey He served as president and chief engineer until 1944, when he became chairman of the board and director of engine research.
He made no further notable contributions to aircraft engine development, however, and his reputation rests on his pioneering achievements during and shortly after World War I. Lawrance's business operations were all located in the New York metropolitan area, where he also made his home. From about 1925 he lived at East Islip on Long Island. Besides his aeronautical activities, he had real estate interests on Long Island. Lawrance, who was an Episcopalian, died of a coronary occlusion in East Islip and was buried in the Locust Valley (N. Y. ) Cemetery.
Lawrance was a founder of the Lawrance Aero-Engine Company in 1817 and of the Lawrance Engineering and Research Corporation in 1930. He designed the Lawrance J-1 air-cooled aircraft engine, the direct ancestor of the extremely successful Wright Whirlwind series of engines. For his J-5 Whirlwind, Lawrance was awarded the annual Collier Trophy in 1928.
Lawrance married Emily Margaret Gordon Dix, daughter of Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Church in New York City. They had three children: Emily, Margaret Lanier, and Francis Cooper.
