Description

Godfrey L. Cabot sits at a bench. A microphone is visible behind him. Original caption: "Aviation Oldtimer. Aug 27 1945. Godfrey Lowell Cabot, manufacturer, world traveler and aviation enthusiast for 74 of his 84 years, as he talked to airport reporters before boarding Pan American World Airways Atlantic Clipper for Paris where he will revive the International Air Federation (Federation Aeronautique Internationale) of which he is President. Mr. Cabot, of 242 Beacon St., Boston, said the worldwide Federation had held its last meeting in January, 1939. It is made up of 40 national aeronautic clubs and is interested in promoting aviation, principally in records.

The trip was his 44th trans-Atlantic crossing--and his first by plane. His first boat crossing was in 1883 on the Cunard liner Parthia, which used sails as well as steam on its 12-day trip. The Clipper trip took one day. His last trip before the war was in June, 1938, when he went to Holland and Berlin. He has traveled extensively, he said, in every continent except Australia and speaks French and Italian in addition to English. He also has flown from 50,000 to 70,000 miles within this country and on foreign domestic lines.

Mr. Cabot told the press that he became interested in aviation first as a boy of ten when his father told him that some day man would outfly the birds. He himself advocated the use of plans for military purposes in 1903.

in 1915, at the age of 54, he learned to fly in a Burgess-Dunn seaplane and three years later he invented and developed the art of picking up burdens in flight. As a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve he was in charge of the Marblehead Aviation Camp in 1917. He said that following that he patrolled the Massachusetts and New Hampshire coasts in his own seaplane, The Lark, 'looking for German subs' for three years. He was the oldest man by 12 years to hold a flying commission. Asked to comment on the future of aviation, in the light of his years of experience, Mr. Cabor said:

'I anticipate that the present geometric ratio of increase will continue for many years. For the next five years the increase in freight will be in greater ratio than passenger service.' He added that he anticipates annual traffic increases of 10 to 15 percent and expects commercial flight time to increase from 120 to 225 miles an hour, with jet propulsion used to accelerate take-offs.

Besides being president of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale since 1941, Mr. Cabot is a past President and has been a governor at large of the National Aeronautic Association since 1924 and is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences. In 1935 he established a professorship in Air Traffic Regulation and Air Transportation at Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont.

He is the donor of the Marie Moors Cabot prizes awarded by Columbia University for the advancement of international friendship in the Western Hemisphere by newspapers, editors and writers. He gave more than a million dollars to Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for carrying forward some of his ideas about storing solar energy.

A member of the noted Cabot family, he laid the foundation of his fortune manufacturing lamp-black in Worthington, Pa., in 1887, branching out in gases and carbides.

Dr. Cabot was one of forty-five passengers on the Clipper, which was bound for Foynes, Eire."