(A Lecture Delivered By Edward Pearson Warner, Under The J...)
A Lecture Delivered By Edward Pearson Warner, Under The James Jackson Cabot Professorship Of Air Traffic Regulation And Air Transportation At Norwich University, November 21, 1937.
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Edward Pearson Warner was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. , the son of Robert Lyon Warner and Ann Pearson. His father, an electrical engineer, moved the family to Cambridge, Massachussets, when Warner was young. Interested in flight while still a schoolboy, he and a friend built a glider with which they won a soaring meet at Boston in 1911. Warner provided the design and technical detail, leaving his friend to do the actual piloting.
He attended the Volkmann School in Boston, and at an early age displayed a capacity for arithmetic and numbers that awed and impressed his contemporaries throughout his professional lifetime. Warner graduated from Harvard with honors in 1916, and received a B. S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the next year. While completing course work for the M. S. at MIT in 1919, he was also an instructor in aeronautical engineering.
Warner became the chief physicist for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1919-1920 and served as the NACA technical attaché in Europe in 1920. As chief physicist he also designed and supervised the construction of the first wind tunnel used by NACA, and began a series of technical reports and writings for NACA publications. Warner returned to MIT in 1920, as associate professor of aeronautical engineering; he had been promoted to professor by 1926. He was a rapid-fire lecturer, highly professional and somewhat aloof in his relationships with students, and possessed of a prodigious knowledge of mathematics. He could work complex formulas in his head. His students at MIT included a number of aeronautical pioneers: General James Doolittle, and such significant aviation designers as Leroy Grumman and James McDonnell. Warner also served on the President's Aircraft Board in 1925, beginning a long commitment to private and public policy studies activities. Warner left MIT to become assistant secretary of the navy for aeronautics in 1926, and for the next three years he played a leading role in the development of naval aviation as an integral arm of the American military capability. As editor of Aviation magazine (published by McGraw-Hill) from 1929 to 1934, his technical expertise and firsthand experience in the development of aeronautical policy helped make the publication into the leading American aviation journal of the day. While continuing as editor of Aviation, Warner also became editorial assistant to the president of McGraw-Hill Publications and helped organize the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences (which became the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1963). In 1929 he was appointed a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a position he held until 1945. Warner also was active in the Society of Automotive Engineers, serving as president in 1930. In 1934-1935, Warner was again drawn into public service as vice-chairman of the Federal Aviation Commission, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to analyze the problems in American airmail service. For the next three years Warner worked as a consulting engineer, becoming deeply involved in drawing up preliminary specifications for a four-engine airliner designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company, a concept that later evolved into the famous DC-4. In the course of this design work, Warner developed a highly significant scientific technique of quantitative measurement and specification. Beginning with descriptions of desirable flying qualities for transport aircraft, as given by pilots, Warner converted these ideas into engineering language that could be incorporated into basic design specifications. The concept spurred further flying-quality research by NACA and was incorporated into airworthiness regulations for air transports. In 1938, Warner was economic and technical adviser to the Civil Aeronautics Authority, which became the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). He was appointed a member in 1939, serving as vice-chairman in 1941 and again from 1943 to 1945. His technical background and vast experience in aeronautical subjects eminently qualified him to do a great deal of work in the formulation of guidelines for certification and regulation of airmen, aircraft, and flight operations. These concerns complemented an abiding interest in flight safety, dating back to his early activities with the Society of Automotive Engineers. During Warner's tenure on the CAB, he became involved with international aspects of aviation operations, serving as a liaison between the CAB and the War Department and the Department of the Navy, and making trips to Alaska and the Caribbean. In 1941, Warner was a member of the W. Averell Harriman commission to England; he assisted in working out details of the lend-lease program involving aircraft. Warner made other wartime trips, including another visit to England in 1944, when he accompanied Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle to discuss the nature of international air transport activities following the conclusion of World War II. This mission led directly to the creation of the International Civil Aviation Conference in November 1944, convened to discuss international air transport operations in the postwar period. From 1945 to 1947, Warner headed the interim council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which became an agency of the United Nations. Under Warner's presidency (1947 - 1957) ICAO grew from twenty-six member nations to a total of seventy. Its activities included the setting forth of standards for navigational services, meteorology, air traffic control and communications, and a host of regulations defining operational activities of both airmen and aircraft. During this period ICAO developed a network of meteorological observation stations throughout the north Atlantic and updated, revised, and renegotiated a series of international conventions dealing with aeronautical activities. Because of his aeronautical knowledge, as well as his broad understanding of the economic, social, and political ramifications of international aviation, the members of ICAO repeatedly elected Warner as its president until his retirement in 1957. During the ceremonies surrounding his departure, colleagues from many nations attested to Warner's fairness and objectivity in conducting affairs of the ICAO. He died at Duxbury, Massachussets In the development of aviation, few men exercised as much influence as Warner in his diverse roles as teacher, researcher, author, bureaucrat, editor, publicist, engineer, planner, administrator, and internationalist. Between 1926 and 1931, Warner wrote or was coauthor of several outstanding books dealing with aeronautical theory and design. His Airplane Design (1927), named the best aviation publication of the year by the Aero Club of France, and The Early History of Air Transportation and Technical Development and Its Effect on Air Transportation (1938), are outstanding and lucid summaries of the state-of-the-art of the day. In addition to technical papers and articles for NACA and Aviation, he wrote many newspaper pieces, and published articles in the Yale Review, Air Affairs, and Foreign Affairs.
Besides that he was also a writer, scientist and a Statesman, a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board at its founding in 1938, a Delegate of the United States to the 1944 Chicago Conference for the Convention on International Civil Aviation, and an international civil servant. Edward Warner's achievements are commemorated by the world's civil aviation community in the international award that bears his name. He delivered the Wilbur Wright memorial lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society of London (1943), and received the Daniel Guggenheim Medal for achievement in aeronautics (1950), the gold medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (1952), and the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy of the National Aeronautic Association (1956).
(A Lecture Delivered By Edward Pearson Warner, Under The J...)
He married Joan Potter in 1931; they had two children.
