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William Starling Burgess (December 25, 1878 – March 19, 1947) was a yacht designer, aviation pioneer, and naval architect.〔 He was one of the great, restless geniuses of American design, making his mark across an extraordinary range of fields, from aviation, naval architecture, and automotive design, to poetry, and perhaps typography. He was awarded the highest prize in aviation, the Collier Trophy in 1915, just two years after Orville Wright won it. In 1933 he partnered with Buckminster Fuller to design and build the radical Dymaxion Car. Between 1930 and 1937 he created three America's Cup-winning J-Class yachts, Enterprise, Rainbow and Ranger (the latter in partnership with Olin Stephens). ==Biography== Burgess was born in Boston, Massachusetts on Christmas Day, December 25, the son of yacht designer Edward Burgess and Caroline "Kitty" Sullivant, a legendary beauty and the daughter of William Starling Sullivant, an eminent natural scientist. Both of Burgess' parents died within weeks of each other when he was 12, leaving him and his 3-year-old brother to be raised by relatives. Like his father, Starling had a great mechanical and mathematical ability and a refined sense of line, form and spatial relationship. From his mother he received a love of literature and poetry, which he regarded as the foundation for all accomplishment. After the death of his parents, Burgess was mentored by many of his father's colleagues, including Nathanael Greene Herreshoff. This relationship was terminated by Herreshoff when Burgess confided his aspiration to become a yacht designer himself. Starling attended Milton Academy, a progressive boarding school near Boston, where he became interested in aviation, designed his first sailboat, Sally II, and patented a sophisticated lightweight machine gun. Burgess graduated from Milton Academy in 1897 and entered Harvard College with the Class of 1901. As Burgess began life at Harvard, tension was building between Spain and the U.S. The sinking of an American battleship, the USS Maine, on February 15, 1898, increased the drumbeat for war, and war was declared on April 11, 1898. Starling Burgess was one of a hundred Harvard undergraduates (out of 2,400) to volunteer for military service. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and because of his proven expertise in weapons design, was promoted to the rank of Gunner’s Mate. He received credit for the courses he missed during this period by special vote of the Harvard faculty. For reasons not entirely clear, he left Harvard without completing his degree, and opened his own yacht design office in Boston. During the Spring Term of his senior year, in March 1901, The Rudder published the following notice: “We are glad to welcome into our company of advertisers Mr. Starling Burgess, a son of the celebrated designer. Mr. Burgess has opened an office at 15 Exchange Street, Boston, and is busily engaged in getting out the designs for several boats, among them being a yawl for Mr. Walter Burgess, whose many boats have been among the most interesting exhibits in this magazine. To the designing end Mr. Burgess has added the business of brokerage, and our readers will find several craft offered for sale in his advertisement.” A year later he partnered with Alpheus Appleton Packard to found Burgess & Packard, Naval Architects and Engineers. In the same year he designed the revolutionary 52 LOA feet scow sloop "Outlook", a highly radical racing yacht which featured a steel truss along the deck midline allowing the hull to be flat, low and light by the standards of the day. The design featured a large, balanced, club foot, self-tacking jib set on an 8 feet bowsprit supported by a dolphin striker. It was very fast and a winner against the more conventional keel boat designs of the day. In 1905 he established a yacht yard in Marblehead, Massachusetts and began designing and building yachts and boats. In the eyes of the rich and famous Starling was part of the "Four Hundred"-the group of long established and very rich American who were devoted to sailing as a recreation. However Starling had an awkward relationship with this rich and powerful group due to his relative lack of capital. In 1908 he became interested in aviation and in 1909 joined with airplane designer Augustus Moore Herring who had left Glenn Curtiss to form the Herring-Burgess Company. The Herring-Burgess Co. built the biplane Flying Fish, which flew over Plum Island on April 17, 1910, the second fully powered and controlled flight in New England. In 1911 Burgess built several planes licensed by the Wright Brothers. He crashed one while demonstrating at College Park Airport in June 1911. Norman Prince and his friends hired Burgess in 1912 to build a plane for them to race in the Gordon Bennett Cup Race. Herring left in 1910 and Greely S. Curtis and Frank H. Russell joined Burgess to form Burgess Company and Curtis, Inc. In 1914 the renamed Burgess Company built its first hydroplane designed by John William Dunne and soon was selling the Burgess-Dunne hydroplanes to the U.S.Army and the U.S. Navy. In addition, the Royal Canadian Air Force purchased a Burgess Dunne hydroplane in 1914. Burgess received the 5th Collier Trophy to be issued, in 1915 for his hydro-aeroplane. With its 800 employees, Burgess Company became the largest employer in Marblehead. At some point in this decade, Burgess designed what was almost certainly his most popular boat, the 14-foot "Brutal Beast." Simple enough for inexpensive mass-production, the Beasts became the dominant instructional craft of Marblehead—and other communities—into the forties. When the U.S. entered WWI, the Burgess Company was sold to John N. Willys (who then sold it to Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company). Burgess joined the Navy, became a Lieutenant Commander and designed planes for the Navy. After the war he returned to boat design and construction and later designed three successful J-class yacht defenders of the America's Cup: Enterprise in 1930, Rainbow in 1934, and Ranger in 1937. In 1922 he and A. Loring Swasey and Frank C. Paine formed the design firm Burgess, Swasey & Paine in Boston. Lewis Francis Herreshoff worked with them. They designed several yachts, including the Advace for John S. Lawrence, the Gosson for Charles Francis Adams III, and the ELLEN for Charles Foster. In 1926 he dissolved Burgess, Swasey & Paine and joined the firm Burgess & Morgan, Ltd in New York City. In 1930 he was commuting to NYC and living in Darien, Connecticut with his wife Else and 2 children. Burgess was friends with Buckminster Fuller and helped him in designing and building his aluminum Dymaxion car. In 1935 he became a consulting naval architect for the Aluminum Company of America with his office at the Bath Iron Works, where he promoted the use of corrosion resistant alloys for ships. He designed the Alumette which was built at the Bath Iron Works. He also designed the sailing yacht Ranger with aluminum masts for Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and he worked closely with Geerd Hendel. During World War II he was employed as a civilian engineer and worked for the Anti-Submarine Development Detachment of the US Atlantic Fleet. In 1946 he was working at the Stevens Institute of Technology on damage control research. He died on 19 March 1947 at his home in Hoboken, New Jersey. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Starling Burgess」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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