1. Alfred William Lawson was an English-born professional baseball player, aviator, and utopian philosopher.
16 Facts About Alfred Lawson
1. 2.
Alfred Lawson played baseball, managed and promoted leagues from 1887 through 1916, and pioneered the US aircraft industry.
3.
Alfred Lawson founded the Lawson Aircraft Company in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to build military training aircraft and later the Lawson Airplane Company in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to build airliners.
4.
Alfred Lawson made one start for the Boston Beaneaters and two for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys during the 1890 season.
5.
Alfred Lawson later managed in the minors from 1905 to 1907.
6.
In 1908, Alfred Lawson started a new professional baseball league called the Union Professional League.
7.
An early aviation advocate, in October 1908, Alfred Lawson started the magazine Fly to stimulate public interest and educate readers on the new aviation science fundamentals.
8.
In early 1913, Alfred Lawson learned to fly the Sloan-Deperdussin and the Moisant-Bleriot monoplanes, becoming an accomplished pilot.
9.
Alfred Lawson designed the steel fuselage Lawson Armored Battler, which never got beyond the drafting board, given doubts within the Army aviation community and the signing of the armistice.
10.
Alfred Lawson secured financial backing, and in five months, he had built and demonstrated in flight his biplane airliner, the 18-passenger Lawson L-2.
11.
Alfred Lawson demonstrated its capabilities in a 2000-mile multi-city tour from Milwaukee to Chicago-Toledo-Cleveland-Buffalo-Syracuse-New York City-Washington, DC-Collinsville-Dayton-Chicago and back to Milwaukee, creating a buzz of positive press.
12.
Alfred Lawson published numerous books on these concepts, all set in a distinctive typography.
13.
Alfred Lawson later propounded a philosophy, Lawsonomy, and the Lawsonian religion.
14.
Alfred Lawson developed, during the Great Depression, the populist economic theory of "Direct Credits", according to which banks are the cause of all economic woes, the oppressors of both capital and labor.
15.
Alfred Lawson believed that the government should replace banks as the provider of loans to business and workers.
16.
Alfred Lawson predicted the worldwide adoption of Lawsonian principles once "everybody understands this subject".