Background
He was born on November 29, 1896.
He was born on November 29, 1896.
He put the first commercial aircraft into production at his East. M. Laird Aviation Company. Laird"s first experience with aviation was watching a chance flight up the shoreline of a Wright Model A flown by Walter Brookins while working as an office boy at the First National Bank of Chicago. Laird"s first contraption was a bicycle with glider wings attached that he built at the age of 15.
He built an airplane of his own design in his mother"s attic and flew it on September 15, 1913, getting 10 feet (30 m) off the ground.
Four months later, he managed to get twice as high His second creation was the 1912 Laird Baby Biplane.
The 1915 biplane of his design, once flown by Katherine Stinson, is on display at the Henry Ford Museum. By the age of 20, Laird was recruited by promoter Bill Pickens to demonstrate aircraft.
He was paid $350 just to take off and circle a field in the early days of skeptical onlookers.
Laird crashed a biplane with a tail modification he had just constructed in Texas, leaving him in the hospital for nine months, and out of World War I.
Over the next four years, about 43 Swallows were built before Laird left the company in 1923 and founded the East. M. Laird Airplane Company to build commercial aircraft such as the Laird Commercial and custom designs. Laird died in Palm Beach, Florida at the age of 87. He was inducted into the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 1999.