William Starling Burgess
William Starling Burgess (December 25, 1878 - 1947) was a yacht designer, aviation pioneer, and naval architect.
Contents
Biography
William Starling Burgess was born in Boston. He was the son of Edward Burgess who died when Starling was 12. Starling attended Milton Academy and Harvard University. He was a partner in Burgess & Packard in 1902 with Alpheus Appleton Packard. In 1905 he established a yacht yard in Marblehead, Massachusetts and began designing and building yachts and boats.
In 1908 he became interested in aviation and in 1909 joined with airplane designer Augustus Moore Herring who had left Glenn Curtiss to form the Herring-Burgess Company. The Herring-Burgess Co. built the biplane Flying Fish, which flew over Plum Island on April 17, 1910. This was the second fully powered and controlled flight in New England. The first took place February 28 at Lake Chabbaco. Herring-Burgess built several planes licensed by the Wright Brothers. Norman Prince and his friends hired Burgess to build a plane for them to race in the Gordon Bennett Cup Race.
In 1911 Herring left, and Greely S. Curtis and Frank H. Russell joined Burgess to form the Burgess Company. In 1912 the Burgess Company built their first hydroplane designed by John William Dunne and soon was selling the Burgess-Dunne hydroplanes to the U.S.Army and the U.S. Navy. In addition, the Royal Canadian Air Force purchased a hydroplane in 1914. Burgess received the 3rd Collier Trophy to be issued in 1915 for his hydro-aeroplane. With its 800 employees, Burgess Company became the largest employer in Marblehead.
At some point in this decade, Burgess designed what was almost certainly his most popular boat, the 14-foot "Brutal Beast." Simple enough for inexpensive mass-production, the Beasts became the dominant instructional craft of Marblehead—and other communities—into the forties.
When the U.S. entered WWI, the Burgess Company was sold to John N. Willys (who then sold it to Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company). Burgess joined the Navy, became a Lieutenant Commander and designed planes for the Navy.
After the war he returned to boat design and construction and later designed three successful J-class yacht defenders of the America's Cup: Enterprise in 1930, Rainbow in 1934, and Ranger in 1937.
In 1922 he and A. Loring Swasey and Frank C. Paine formed the design firm Burgess, Swasey & Paine in Boston. Lewis Francis Herreshoff worked with them. They designed several yachts, including the Advace for John S. Lawrence, the Gosson for Charles Francis Adams III, and the ELLEN for Charles Foster. In 1926 he dissolved Burgess, Swasey & Paine and joined the firm Burgess & Morgan, Ltd in New York City. In 1930 he was commuting to NYC and living in Darien, Connecticut with his wife Else and 2 children.
Burgess was friends with Buckminster Fuller and was helped him when Fuller was designing and building his aluminum Dymaxion car.
In 1935 he became a consulting naval architect for the Aluminum Company of America with his office at the Bath Iron Works, where he promoted the use of corrosion resistant alloys for ships. He designed the Alumette which was built at the Bath Iron Works. He also designed the sailing yacht Ranger with aluminum masts for Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and he worked closely with Geerd Hendel.
During World War II he was employed as a civilian engineer and worked for the Anti-Submarine Development Detachment of the US Atlantic Fleet. In 1946 he was working at the Stevens Institute of Technology on damage control research.
Possible authorship of Times New Roman
Former head of typographic development at Mergenthaler Linotype Mike Parker has argued that Burgess originally drew the typeface that would become Times New Roman around 1904.[1][2][3] This claim is controversial, with the biographer of Stanley Morison, who is typically considered the co-designer of the typeface along with Victor Lardent, claiming that the theory is based on a fabrication.[1] In 2009, Parker released Starling,[4] a typeface based upon Burgess' alleged drawings housed at the Smithsonian Institution.
Marriages
Burgess married five times. His first marriage was to Helene Adams Willard (1882-1902) in 1901.
In 1904 he married Rosamond Tudor (b. 1878), the portrait artist and granddaughter of Frederic Tudor. Rosamund Burgess was one of the few American amateurs who gained their engineer's license to operate a steam launch, serving the necessary apprenticeship by firing their boat Ox.[5] Tudor and Burgess had three children: sons Edward (1905-1910), who drowned after falling off their boat and Fredrick (b. 1907) and daughter Starling (1915-2008). Starling later became a well known illustrator and children's author under the name of Tasha Tudor.
Burgess married Else Foss in 1925 and had two children, Diana and Ann. He subsequently wed Nannie Dale Biddle in 1933 and Majorie Young in 1945.
A friend of his last wife, Marjorie Young, described Burgess: "With all his brilliance, he is a child, and that is part of his charm. He will not face hard facts, but will hide from them and will love the person who shields him from them."
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Article in the Financial Times magazine on Parker's theory
- ↑ MyFonts biography of Burgess that briefly mentions the controversy over his authorship of Times New Roman
- ↑ Parker described his claim in 'Starling Burgess, Type Designer', Printing History 31/32 (1994): 52-108. http://typophile.com/node/21183
- ↑ Mike Parker's typeface Starling
- ↑ Barry, James P. (2003). American Powerboats: The Great Lakes Golden Years. Classic Motorbooks. p. 10. ISBN 0-7603-1466-7. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m0hOchN05zIC.
External links
- W.Starling Burgess Papers, at Mystic Seaport.
- Burgess and Buckminister Fuller.
- Anitra Designer.
- Boston's Gold Coast by Joseph E. Garland, published 1981, pages 217-218.
- Burgess Genealogy: Descendants of the Four Sons of Thomas Burgess, by Katharine W. Hiam, published 1997.
- The Art of Tasha Tudor by Harry Davis, published 2000.
- Tasha Tudor ancestry.
- Boston Globe article on the 100th anniversary of the first flight of the Flying Fish
