History
The base is named after the Wright brothers, who used the Huffman Prairie portion of what became Wright-Patterson as their testing ground, and Frank Stuart Patterson, son and nephew of the co-founders of National Cash Register. Wishing to recognize the contributions of the Patterson family (owners of National Cash Register) the area of Wright Field east of Huffman Dam (including Wilbur Wright Field, Fairfield Air Depot, and the Huffman Prairie) was renamed Patterson Field on July 6, 1931, in honor of Lt. Frank Stuart Patterson, who was killed in 1918 during a flight test of a new mechanism for synchronizing machine gun and propeller, when a tie rod broke during a dive from 15,000 feet (4,600 m), causing the wings to separate from his Airco DH.4 .
In 1948, the nearby Wright Field and Patterson Field were merged under the name Wright-Patterson AFB. The former Wright Field became Area B of the combined installation, and the former Patterson Field became Area C. In 1951, the Air Force created a separate command for research and development called the Air Research and Development Command. The Wright Air Development Center was responsible for principal elements of flight testing, engineering and laboratories. Some of the test pilots working at the base, such as Neil Armstrong and Ed White, went on to become NASA astronauts.
Read more about this topic: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
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“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)