Wong Tsu

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wong.

Wong Tsu (1893–1965; Chinese: 王助) was a Chinese aeronautical engineer.

Life and education

Tsu was born in Beijing, China. At the age of 12, he was selected as a naval cadet, and at 16 he was sent to England to study naval engineering, then to the U.S. to study aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the U.S. his name is sometimes inverted to Tsu Wong, to put the family name last, as is the western custom.

Work

Graduating in 1916 from MIT, he learned to fly at the Curtiss Flying Boat School in Buffalo, New York. He was then hired by the fledgling Boeing Aircraft Company in May, 1916.[1] and assisted in the design of it's first successful product, the Boeing Model C,[2][3] more than 50 of which were acquired by the U.S. Navy.[2] He also brought considerable expertise in wind tunnel testing to Boeing, and advised on the design of the Boeing Aerodynamical Chamber at the University of Washington. In 1917, after around a year at Boeing, he returned to China where he became chief secretary of the airline China National Aviation Corporation. His picture appears in the account of Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, a joint venture between China and the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.

When the Kuomintang government was defeated in the civil war, Wong went to Taiwan where he became professor of aviation at Cheng Kung University.

During his lifetime, Wong is believed to have had a hand in designing 30 aircraft. In 2004, at a time when it was hoping to increase its ties to the Chinese aviation industry, Boeing unveiled a plaque and exhibit at its Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, honoring his work as its first engineer.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Areddy, James (24 September 2015). "The Chinese Birdman Who Got U.S. Aircraft Giant Boeing Flying". WSJ Blogs - China Real Time Report. Retrieved 2016-01-22.
  2. 1 2 Bauer, Eugene (2000). Boeing: the first century. TABA Publishing. p. 18. ISBN 1879242095.
  3. ↑ Fallows, James (2013). China Airborne: The Test of China's Future. Knopf Doubleday. p. 50. ISBN 9781400031276.
  4. ↑ Vu, Carol. "An aviation pioneer, no longer forgotten". www.nwasianweekly.com. Retrieved 2016-01-22.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, May 02, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.