going back to its 1931 founding as the Seversky Aircraft Company. Each shelf, labeled with an aircraft type, was crammed with manuals, reports, blueprints, and memos; the archive covered every ...

(Seversky Aero later became Seversky Aircraft Corporation.) But by 1939 the firm had lost $550,000, and in a twist of fate the board of directors forced Seversky out and eradicated his name from ...