Wong, Tsoo, 1893-1965
Dates
- Existence: 1893 - 1965
- Usage: 1893 - 1965
Biographical Note
Wong Tsoo was the first aeronautical engineer at the Boeing Company.
Wong Tsoo was born in 1893 in Beijing, China. He went to England at age sixteen to undertake advanced naval studies at Armstrong Academy. In the 1910s he came to the United States and studied aeronautical engineering at MIT, recieving his master's degree in 1915. Upon graduation, Wong attended a summer flying course at the Curtiss Aeroplane Company in upstate New York and began looking for work. In June 1916, he sent a letter to Lt. Conrad Westervelt, who was stationed at the New York Navy Yard, and asked for an interview. Impressed with the young engineer, Westervelt hired him for the Boeing Company at $20 per week, plus travel expenses. Wong arrived in Seattle, Washington just weeks before the first test flight of Boeing and Westervelt’s first production seaplanes, the B&Ws. Although he helped with final tests on the newly built planes, Wong's primary task was to produce a competitive design for a military training plane.
After World War I, Wong returned to China witht other MIT graduates to start a naval aircraft manufacturing company and naval aviation school. Based in Foochow, China, they designed and built a floatplane, the Char, by the end of 1918. In 1929, Westervelt contacted Wong to support his work with the Curtiss-Wright company and the Chinese government. Wong became chief engineer for the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC).
In 1949, he relocated to Taiwan to teach at Chen Kung University. Wong Tsoo died in 1965 in Tainan, Taiwan.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
Biographical Information Files - W
William E. Boeing Sr. Papers
William E. Boeing, Sr. (1881-1956) was an aviation pioneer and founded The Boeing Company in 1916. The collection holds textual materials, such as correspondence, philately, business-related materials, clippings, and ephemera, as well as photographs and illustrations related to his personal and business life, circa 1783-2008. Major areas of interest include family photographs and extensive personal and business-related correspondence.
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