Frederick Converse Beach

Woolworth Building, 1915, seat of Scientific American offices

Frederick Converse Beach was born on March 27, 1848, in Brooklyn, New York, to Alfred Ely Beach, builder of New York's first subway. His grandfather was Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, and his uncle was Moses Sperry Beach, publisher of the Boston Daily Times. His other uncle William Yale Beach was a banker and real estate developer, and his cousin Charles Yale Beach was a manufacturer and real estate investor.

Frederick Converse Beach graduated from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in 1868. In 1869, he was made night superintendent of the Beach Pneumatic Transit tunnel under Broadway, and then in 1870, operated a pneumatic car and explained its working to the public.[3]

From 1871 to 1876, he was engaged in the manufacture of electrical instruments in New York, making telegraphs.[4] He later became Editor for Scientific American, their family magazine, and became one of its co-owners. He was also co-owner of Munn & Company, a family owned patent agency, and American Photography magazine.[5]

After working on improving the telephone technology, he became the first, in 1880, to transmit sermons over the telephone, communicating from Plymouth Church (Brooklyn), to his father's house at 31 Union Place, in front of Union Square, New York.[6] In 1884, he founded the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York, becoming its first President, and joined the Postal Progress League and became also its President.[7]

He secured a parcel post for the United States, brought many reforms, and looked forward to the time when aerial transport of all kinds of mail will happen by the atmosphere.[8] He was a member of the New York Electrical Society, the Camera Club, the American Institute, and the National Arts Club in Manhattan, with members including J.P. Morgan and President Teddy Roosevelt.[9] He was made President of the Housatonic Yacht Club, the oldest operating Yacht club in Connecticut.[10] The club was founded by his family on his father's property in Stratford, Connecticut.

In 1889 he was the editor of American Photography, and in 1896 he became a director of Scientific American. In 1898, he introduced the first electric automobile in Stratford, Connecticut, and built a power plant for its maintenance.[11] From 1902 he was editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Americana, which was the first major multivolume encyclopedia published in the United States.

Frederick also funded, in thousands of dollars, the airplane designs of his son Stanley from 1903–1910.[12]

He died on June 8, 1918, at his home in Stratford, Connecticut.[13]

Wayne Cars, Stanley Yale Beach was a buyer of their first model in 1903

Frederick Converse Beach was the father of Alfred Gilbert, Ethel Holbrook, who married to caricaturist James Albert Wales, and Stanley Yale.[14][15] Frederick's grandson was Frederick Converse Beach Jr.. He graduated from Trinity College, and became Editor of the Boston University Law Review, Deputy Judge of Stratford Town Court, and Prosecuting Attorney with his law practice.[16] He also served during the World War in the Ambulance Company, Field Hospital, and Medical Attachment, and was a Freemason of the American Legion and a member of the Housatonic Yacht Club. His father was Stanley Yale Beach.

Stanley Yale Beach (1877-1955), was a wealthy aviation pioneer, who was an early financier of Gustave Whitehead, the contested first maker of a powered controlled flight before the Wright brothers.[17][18][19] He attended Yale's Sheffield Scientific School like his father, and afterward developed a lifetime interest in aeronautics, engineering, and inventing.[20] He was an early automobilist, and followed the development of the automobile as "Automobile Editor" of Scientific American, their family scientific magazine.[21]

He acquired and ran a single-cylinder Thomas 1903 from the Thomas Motor Company across the country, which was the same year Ford Motors was founded. He acquired in 1904 the newly built two-cylinder Wayne from the Wayne Automobile Company, and traveled most of the southwestern part of New York State with the Wayne.[22] This company was working with Henry Ford at his beginning and had their factory next door to his in Detroit.[23] They later merged with the Northern Manufacturing Company and the E-M-F Company, becoming the second largest American car manufacturer after Ford.[24]

361 Broadway, seat of Scientific American, where Stanley worked for his family as Automobile and Aeronautic Editor

Stanley began designing airplane engines on his own in 1903, tried to build a high-speed boat with an airplane engine, and designed a biplane with Gustave Whitehead.[25][26] He became half-assignor of Whitehead's aeroplane patent and signed it as a witness.[27] The body of the framework was referred by Scientific American as a bat-like aeroplane and a bat machine, on which Whitehead made a number of short flights in 1901.[28] This was before the first flight achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903. In 2013, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into law House Bill 6671 recognizing Gustave Whitehead as the first person to achieve powered flight, despite the issue still being debated among historians.[29]

Stanley worked in the Beach Building on 125 East 23rd Street, Manhattan, but also worked for Scientific American Magazine, the family business, as their "Aeronautic Editor". He wrote numerous articles on automobiles, motor boats and flying machines.[30] The company was seated at 37 Park Row, and later at 261 Broadway, and finally at 361 Broadway.[31] A few years before his father's death, in 1915, they moved the headquarters to the famous Woolworth Building in Manhattan at 233 Broadway, one of the first skyscrapers, and the tallest building in the world at the time. The building had been finished in 1913, just two years earlier.[32]

Enterprises

Whitehead's Albatross-type glider, partner of Stanley Yale Beach

Stanley then founded his own enterprises. His businesses were the Beach Engineering Company, the Beach Laboratories Company, the Scientific Aeroplane Company, and the Beach-Basenach Airship Company of America. He also founded associations such as the Aero Science Club, and co founded the Aeronautic Society of New York.[33]

Early airship concept

He became a member of the Aero Club of America, along with Vincent Astor, and was the head of Scientific Aeroplane Company of Stratford, a Connecticut airplane manufacturer that proposed to build machines for fairs and other amusement enterprises.[34][35] With Whitehead, they took a flight from the Harvard Aviation Field for the Harvard-Boston Aero meet of September 1910. From Lordship Park in Connecticut, their ambitions was to be the first aeroplanists to fly across Long Island Sound.[36]

In 1910, Stanley also made an impact on the aeroplane world by inventing and patenting the first aeropane with a gyroscope attachment for stability.[37] Around that time, with his Scientific Aeroplane Company of New York, he negotiated with the British government to sell them nine huge triplanes capable of crossing the Atlantic ocean in one flight, which was regarded with skepticism by aviation experts.[38]

In 1915, Stanley competed with three other companies to try to win the contract for the construction of the first United States Navy airship, the project DN-1, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time.[39] The competitors were the American Dirigible Balloon Syndicate of New York, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Ohio, and the Connecticut Aircraft Company of Connecticut.[40]

He worked with the Germans, trying to sell airships in America and secure a trans-Atlantic mail contract. Through his enterprise, he also contacted in 1930 the young film producer Howard Hughes, in an attempt to sell him an airship which would allow Hughes to travel to Europe in complete privacy and secrecy.[41]

His personal correspondences for business interests are part of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Correspondents included Charles Nungesser and François Coli, the aviators who tried the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York. It also included correspondence with General Billy Mitchell, the father of the United States Air Force, and Nikolaus Basenach, partner of Major general Hans Georg Friedrich Groß, the first builders of German military airships.[42]