A Brief History of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation [Promotional brochure], 1940

Document Type: Sales and marketing (Promotional).

Purpose: Sales and marketing.

Authority: Company (Manufacturer).

Scope: Company marketing brochure with numerous drawings and photographs. Traces the evolution of the company from the first days of the Wright brothers to May of 1939 when Pan American Clippers using Wright Cyclone engines "inaugurated passenger service to Europe via airplane" and Wright engines are "providing motive energy for ever-larger planes" such as the Army's Douglas B-19 bomber and the Navy's 70-ton Martin Mars flying boat.

From the conclusion: "Wright Aeronautical plants now spread over many acres in two states. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, the plants turn out engines. And up in a section of the main plant, in ultra-modern laboratories equipped with every known device for research, the Wright Aeronautical development engineers are building more powerful, more efficient engines. They have a quarter of a century of experience back of them now, in the building of aircraft engines. They are building not only for the quick end of a war but for the future, when commercial tonnage will be moved in great freighters and express transports, powered by Wright."

Contents: Details the early days of the "family" history of the company (from the first flight by the Wright brothers to their August 1908 demonstration to the Army (deemed "the first public flight in America"), and the resulting surge in sales and need to rapidly develop a company to design, test and build airplanes and suitable engines. Has sections titled: "Wright: First Name in Aviation"; "Research Paves the Way"; "Aviation Begins to Grow"; "Wright Turns to Engines"; "The Post-War Era"; "The Turn of the Tide"; "The 'Famous Flights'"; "Birth of the Airlines"; "Wright Builds Airplanes"; "The Modern Transport Plane"; "Growth of the Cyclone 9"; "Designed for Airlines"; "Cyclones Around the World"; "The Cyclone 14"; "Power for Tonnage Transport" and "Compact Power for Tanks". Also includes a genealogical chart showing the "...various companies which were absorbed to form the present Wright Aeronautical Corporation (A Division of Curtiss-Wright Corporation)."