Paul Kollsman

Paul Kollsman (1900 to 1982) was a German-American inventor who created the first sensitive barometric altimeter, a key enabler of instrument flight in airplanes. He studied engineering and science in Stuttgart and Munich, emigrated to the United States in 1923 and learned to make aircraft instruments at the Pioneer Instrument Company in Brooklyn. In 1928 he and his brother Otto founded Kollsman Instruments with 500 dollars of savings. In 1929 James Doolittle tested the altimeter on the first flights made entirely by instruments, and the company soon won a first Navy order for 300 altimeters, the first of many; later models gained the adjustable Kollsman window and by the mid 1930s Kollsman altimeters dominated the aircraft market. The company was sold to Square D in 1940, and he is credited as the inventor on 124 patents. He also founded the Snow Valley ski area in Vermont and endowed an aeronautical library.