His formal education ended after eighth grade, but as one engineer friend said, “Bill didn’t have the limitations of an education.
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Lear may not have been an aeronautical engineer, but he was many other things: an entrepreneur and visionary, a salesman who could sell a stereo to a deaf Inuit, a serial philanderer, charmer and best friend of everyone he met, particularly the journalists who watered at his trough. (Mayer/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images) A failed Swiss fighter called the P-16 served as the initial inspiration for Lear’s business jet, although there has been debate about the extent of the debt. Until Bill Lear came along, only airliners and some military aircraft carried radios. He designed lightweight avionics for general aviation, and he was the first to make light planes true traveling machines, able to fly long distances through bad weather and good, with navigation radios to help pilots find their way. It was once said that the great Lockheed aerodynamicist Kelly Johnson could “see” air, and perhaps Lear could see electricity. Frank Sinatra bought one and enjoyed loaning it to his famous friends golfer Arnold Palmer had one Carly Simon mentioned the Learjet in her hit song “You’re So Vain.”īut Lear’s forte was electronics, not airplane design. Owning a Learjet also became a winged symbol of success. “Saying Learjet is like saying Kleenex even if the business aircraft on the ramp, like the tissue paper on the counter, is a different brand,” wrote Walter Boyne and Philip Handleman in The 25 Most Influential Aircraft of All Time. The resulting Learjet became popular shorthand for any business aircraft. (Such an autopilot was one of Lear’s greatest achievements.) Lear simply decided that the world needed a small, light and comparatively inexpensive business jet, and he hired good engineers to do the heavy lifting. Lear entered the realm of business travel when he began converting Lockheed Lodestars into plusher versions he called Learstars.īill Lear is popularly assumed to have been the designer of the Learjet, but he could no more have designed an airplane than an itinerant aviation writer could knock out a lightweight autopilot. Lear, as was his wont, moved on to more challenging problems while Motorola was still a garage-size shop, and he continued through a lifetime of peaks and valleys to increase his patent tally-127 of them, some for major inventions, some for pointless trifles-by the time he died in 1978. It all started with Bill Lear’s prototype of an AM radio receiver small enough to fit into a 1920s automobile, which ultimately led to the development of a mega-billion-dollar corporation called Motorola. No, not a Learjet-unless you’re richer than we reckon-but the practical, affordable, compact car radio. How the Learjet Became the Ultimate Status Symbol Close
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