Flight Greats:

                       

Frank S. Lahm

         
Born in Canton, Ohio the son of Congressman Samuel Lahm, Frank became interested in aeronautics through the reading of DaVinci. He married Adelaide Purdy of Mansfield in 1875. After the death of Adelaide and two daughters, Frank went to Paris in 1880 and became an agent of the Remington Typewriter Company. He alternated venues for fifty years staying in Ohio in the Summer months and living in Paris the rest of the year. He joined the French Aero Club and flew his balloon, Katherine Hamilton , named after his daughter. And in 1907 he established the Aero Society of Ohio. Flying many different hot air balloon flights from Walnut Avenue and East Tuscarawas, he was accompanied by Orville Wright in one of them. Because of his many flights with the Ohio, Canton became internationally famous as a Ballooning Capital of the United States. In the 1920's Frank organized the Aeronautical Club. His Aero Society successfully launched 30 flights in 1909, including a competition between the Ohio and the Skypilot. In 1910 the Society launched 10 more flights.
           
 
Frank P. Lahm
             

Frank Purdy Lahm was born in Mansfield, Ohio on November 17, 1877. Three years later Frank S.Lahm, his father, was alternating venues between Ohio and Paris. Earlier he attended public school in Mansfield and joined his father in Paris attending a Dominican school there. In 1883 he spent two years at a military school in Michigan and entered West Point in 1897. Athletically gifted, Frank served in the Philippines for two years. Returning to West Point, he taught French in 1903. His father introduced Frank to ballooning with an initial night flight, and to the Wright Brothers in 1907, where they together launched balloon flights in Canton. By 1905 he had won the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, a license to pilot. He won in 1906 an international race between Paris and England. In 1907 he was appointed to the Aeronautical Division of the Chief Signal Office in Washington. He tested the Wright plane for the military flying with Orville Wright in 1909. Wright later trained Frank and Frederick E. Humphreys to fly the plane and in 1909 Frank flew solo. Frank was sent to Manila where he trained pilots in the Wright B Plane. Frank served the military in Texas, San Diego, and in Fort Omaha, Nebraska. He served the British and French military ballooning operations and was given the Legion of Merit, French Legion of Honor, and the Portuguese Order of Avis. He coauthored a book with Colonel Charles deForest Chandler, How Our Army Grew Wings.

   
 
 
 
 
     
Willliam H. Martin
 

William Martin was born at the site of his father's ropemaking business on January 22, 1855. That site is now occupied by the Frank Bow Building, the old post office building on 2nd and Cleveland S.W. in Canton, Ohio. On that same site George Halas organized the National Football League. One of William's teachers was Anna McKinley, the President's sister. He was an inventor from early years making a ropespinning machine, and toy planes with rubber band engines. After marriage he studied engineering, and surveyed. In a debate at Brush College he argued, "resolved that man could fly." In 1900 he demonstrated for the New York Aeronautic Society his rubber band propelled air plane. He received a patent on his toy plane in 1908. That same year he designed a full sized V-shaped wing monoplane with sled runners functional in snow. Horse driven the plane flew 200 feet at a height of twenty five feet. In 1909 his new wife, Almina was the first woman to fly in a heavier than air machine. William made more than 100 successful flights, and financed by William A. Hoberdier demonstrated his plane successfully at the Hudson-Fulton celebration in New York. The plane in that year was pulled by an automobile. Later the monoplane would occupy a place next to the Lindbergh plane in the Smithsonian.