Charles E. Taylor

(1868-1956) lived in Lincoln and Kearney. Mechanic, built and tested the four-cylinder engine used by the Wright Brothers in the world’s first airplane flight on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, an event ranked by journalists and scholars for the Newseum in 1999 as the 4th top news story of the 20th century, built a 30-horsepower engine for the world’s first military airplane in 1909; inducted into National Aviation Hall of Fame at Dayton, Ohio in 1965. Consult Collier’s, December 25, 1948, pp. 27, 68, 70 and Lincoln Evening Journal, Dec. 17, 1970, p. 6 and Journal of American Aviation Historical Society, Fall 1998, pp. 228-235 and Howard R. DuFour, Charles E. Taylor 1968-1956: The Wright Brothers Mechanician (Privately published, 1997) and Pilot Magazine, Special Edition (Archant Specialist, 2003) 125-132 and Crete /NE/ News, December 7, 2005, p. C-4.

Back to Engineering and Technology
Back to Categories