Arthur P. Warner

Arthur Pratt Warner (1870 to 1957) was an American inventor, manufacturer and early aviator, born in Jacksonville, Florida, who died in Beloit, Wisconsin. Largely self-taught as an engineer, he worked with his brother Charles on the first automobile speedometer, a device that made him wealthy and led to the Warner Instrument Company, incorporated in 1903 with Warner as vice president and general manager. After he sold that business in 1912 for 1.2 million dollars, he founded the Warner Manufacturing Company in 1917 to build automobile and truck trailers, and the work for that firm produced his electric brake and a power clutch. He also bought a disassembled airplane from Glenn Curtiss, put it together without a manual, and made the first flight in Wisconsin at Beloit on 4 November 1909, which made him the first American private citizen to buy a commercially built airplane. He retired in 1934.