BACKGROUND AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Aviation and electronics were natural avenues of endeavor for William P. Lear.

The long-range vision of William P. Lear brought into being many products and ideas of lasting benefit to man and his mobility.

All his life, William P. Lear dealt with radical advances in the ways that people communicate with each other and the way they travel. If you fly, listen to the radio, receive mail by air, of have a radio or tape player in your car, you're the beneficiary of the Lear genius.

Any one of Bill Lear's many corporate careers would have represented a satisfactory life's work for an ordinary man.  As an inventor, he is the recipient of more than 140 patents and is credited with these "firsts", accomplishments essential to the world's corporate and industrial vitality:

• First radio in an automobile (in 1922, which originated the Motorola radio).
• First navigational radio for general aviation aircraft
• First radio direction-finder for general aviation aircraft
• First practical wire recorder
• First lightweight aircraft automatic pilot for general aviation aircraft.
• First eight-track stereo tape player and cartridges
• First successful business jet airplane (500 sold up to May 1975 and 2000+ units built through 2006) which defined what a business-jet should be and whose name has become legendary.

His ideas in electronics for aircraft were the cornerstones of Lear, Inc., which grew from its 1930 founding to an industry with plants in California, the Midwest and Europe employing more than 5,000 persons and approaching $100,000,000 in annual sales. In 1962, Mr. Lear sold his interest in Lear, Inc., (which became Lear-Siegler) to finance his firm conviction - shared by few others at the time - that there was a market for a jet-powered business aircraft.

Representing a new challenge, the successful launching of the world-famous LearJet demonstrated the breadth of talent and skill possessed by William P. Lear. It set the seal on a track record of success in every major project he has undertaken, a record studded with such honors as the Collier Trophy, the Horatio Alger Award, the Great Silver Medal of the. City of Paris, Sweden's Thulin Medal, the Franklin Medal, and Honorary Doctorates of Engineering from the University of Michigan, Notre Dame and University of Nevada/Reno and a Doctorate of Science from the Art Center College of Design.

Never content or satisfied, William P. Lear sold his LearJet Companies to Gates Rubber Company in 1967, and has continued with the same ingenuity, drive and inventive genius to establish new companies with new advanced developments and products in Reno, Nevada. His entire attention then became directed to the design and development of the twin jet engine aircraft Learstar 600 which was subsequently built under license by Canadair / Bombardier and is known today and include the Challenger Series aircraft as well as the Regional Jet series of aircraft. William P. Lear's last years were dedicated to the Lear Fan, a revolutionary all-composite aircraft which eventually died without the careful eye and strong leadership of its creator.