came from a facetious old fossil at the head of a well known University saying: “If we catch any balloonatics around this institution we will put them in a place where they will be well guarded.”
 That did not make a very auspicious start for the Founder of the Aircraft Industry and Airline Service but it was genuine experience.
 The wise men of those days actually fumed and giggled at my forecasts that air transportation was the next step in man’s progress here on earth.
 Just a short time before that, a famous astronomer “proved” by his mathematical conglomeration that “it is impossible to make a heavier than air machine fly.”
 Then subsequently, after a machine was actually made to fly, scientific wiseacres everywhere “proved” by their figures that airplanes would never be anything more than playthings to be exhibited at country fairs. One Dean of a large University publicly announced that because a number of aviators were being killed in their attempts to fly, that flying should be made unlawful and be prohibited altogether.
 Therefore, under such circumstances I found many difficulties to overcome in trying to make the public at large understand the time had arrived for the introduction of a greater means of transportation than man­kind had ever had before.
 The funny-mugs said that they would like to fly if they could “keep one foot upon the ground.”
 The “intellectuals” said that it was childish to talk of such absurd notions as an Aircraft Industry and passenger traffic through the air.
 So that drove me back to the kite flying kids again, some of whom took the matter seriously, and, by publishing in “FLY” articles about kites, gliders and models of prospective airplanes I finally gained a following of several thousand enthusiasts, most of whom were lads from 10 to 20 years of age.
 But even the youngsters thought I was stretching things somewhat in my forecasting editorials. My own office boy claimed that I had ruined his reputation by stating that within ten years airplanes would be built to fly more than 200 miles an hour and be capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean. He said that his friends among the grass cutting aviators thought Lawson must be off of his base to make such ridiculous statements.
 And when those grass-cutters finally got their cranky machines into the air for a few minutes at a time they were unanimous in their declaration that it was rank nonsense for Lawson to say that aviators would have to fight up in the air just as soon as France, Germany and England decided to go to war with one another.
 The college boys called my magazine “FLY” a thesis on insects and later they called my magazine “AIRCRAFT,” airgraft. Funny, eh?
 Yes, I coined the word Aircraft in 1908, trademarked the word Aircraft in 1910 and put