If you fly in a commercial airplane, it might have been manufactured by Airbus, Boeing, or a few others. But if you fly in a private plane, particularly in the US, it’s pretty likely to have been made by Cessna.
Cessna Aircraft was founded in 1927 by Clyde Cessna, who was born December 5, 1879 in Iowa. He was born on a farm, and growing up he demonstrated considerable mechanical talent when he repaired and improved the equipment around the farm. After finishing his education (which wasn’t extensive), he moved to Enid, Oklahoma and made his living selling cars.
Then, when he was about 30, he went to a county fair and saw a demonstration flight of one of those new-fangled aeroplanes. He was captivated, left the car business, and moved to New York state, where he got a job at the Queen Aeroplane Company. In the process he learned how aircraft were constructed (at least at the time; nowadays wood, silk, and shellac are no longer used very much). It took him only a year to decide to build his own airplane. He used a motor from a boat, and his first test flight…ended in a failure. He kept trying, though. There was nothing wrong with his design, but while he was trying to test it, he was also teaching himself how to fly. On the 13th attempt he finally figured it out, and by the end of 1911 was making miles-long flights. He was the first person to build and fly an airplane in the central US.
He kept designing and building new airplanes, and discovered he could make a pretty good living doing demonstration flights at fairs and other events. In 1916 he moved his business to a warehouse where he not only built airplanes, but opened a flying school. But then in 1917 the US entered World War I, and Cessna had to close his businesses. He went back to the family farm.
When the war ended, airplanes were much more widely known, and Cessna founded the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Kansas, along with two partners. He handled the design duties, and the company’s airplanes started setting records for speed and distance. He and his partners constantly argued about his designs, though — they were very advanced for the time, and his partners were never sure they’d be salable. So after just two years, Cessna left, got a new partner, and founded Cessna-Roos Aircraft. His partner bowed out, and the company became Cessna Aircraft Corporation in 1927. Their airplanes were successful and getting more popular, but then the Great Depression intervened. Cessna closed the company for a while, then reopened it in 1934, and finally sold it to two of his nephews — an aeronautical engineer and an attorney. Cessna himself returned, once again, to the family farm.
After that he stayed out of the daily operations of the Cessna company, but kept inventing things on the farm. He built some sort of very early diesel-powered bulldozer that he used for building ponds on his and neighboring farms. Cessna was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1978 and the International Air & Space Hall of Fame in 1983, and the Kingman Airport-Clyde Cessna Field in Kingman, Kansas is named after him. He didn’t live to see any of those honors, though; he died at 74 in 1954. But if you’re a private pilot, you can still fly a Cessna airplane; the company is still around, although now it’s a subsidiary of Textron Aviation.
