Giovanni Battista Caproni

[citation needed] In 1908, he founded the Caproni factory in the Taliedo district of Milan, Italy, to manufacture biplanes.

In 1911, the year his company was named Società de Agostini e Caproni, he switched to monoplane construction, in which he had greater success.

Although it made a very favorable impression on the public when first displayed, the Ca.48 probably never entered airline service, and on August 2, 1919, a Ca.48 crashed near Verona, Italy, killing everyone on board (14, 15, or 17 people, according to various sources) in Italy's first commercial aviation disaster and one of the earliest – and, at the time, the deadliest – airliner accidents in history.

[1] The Caproni company produced aircraft for the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) during World War II – primarily bombers, transports, seaplanes, and trainers, although the Caproni Vizzola subsidiary also built several fighter prototypes.

[7] In the 2013 Japanese anime film The Wind Rises, a fictionalized version of him interacts with the protagonist.

Giovanni Caproni (on the left) on board the second Caproni Ca.32 at Taliedo airport in July 1915.
Giovanni Caproni autographed drawings by Manuel Rosenberg from Rome, Italy 1922 for the Cincinnati Post