Vearne Clifton Babcock (28 April 1887 – 15 February 1972) was an American aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Times of Philadelphia reported that Vearne C. Babcock would ride in the first race, six furlongs, at Delmar Park, St. Louis, Missouri, on 22 October 1901.
[4] The Buffalo Express carried results the following day of the races held 5 June 1902 at the Saint Louis fairground, in which Terra Incognita was ridden to a fourth-place finish by Babcock in the sixth race of the day, over a course of one mile, 70 yards.
[8][9] "Babcock moved to Seattle, Washington, and built a second Wright copy in 1909, the same year he and a partner formed Babcock-Breininger Aeroplane Supply Co., building several more derivative aircraft.
Since 1919, he has devoted his entire time to airplane design and research and the building of experimental and commercial planes.
"The company experienced several reorganizations and in 1930 it was acquired by the S. Taubman Aircraft Co., and became known also as Babcock-Vlcek Co."[1] Babcock's biplane design, The Teal, was built at Stow Field, near Kent, Ohio, and was flown in the 1926 National Air Tour, but was written off on the first day when the pilot ran out of gas just short of Chicago and crash-landed.
[7] Other Babcock designs included the side-by-side two-seat shoulder-wing cabin monoplane Babcock-Vlcek X Airmaster, of which one example, registered NX20490,[13] was built.
[20] Vearne Babcock organized the DeLand Pool by 1942, a complex of small manufacturing and fabricating shops in Central Florida.
[21][22] This firm produced 60 Waco CG-4 assault gliders during World War II under the designation CG-4A-BBs, in two batches.
[7] Babcock applied for a United States patent on 22 March 1950 for the design of a catamaran-style boat hull which offered "the several advantageous characteristics of good stability, longitudinal, lateral and directional; capability of relatively high speeds at low power; maneuverability; shallow draft; and susceptibility to economical manufacture, operation and maintenance."
[25] He called the design the Polynesian Clipper powered catamaran, the name of which was filed with the Library of Congress, Catalog Office, on 27 August 1954.