Howard Hughes

About Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (24 December 1905 – 5 April 1976) was an American aviator, industrialist, film producer/director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big-budget and often-controversial films like Hell's Angels, Scarface, and The Outlaw. As an aviator, Hughes set multiple world air-speed records, built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 "Spruce Goose" aircraft, and acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines. Despite his contributions to aeronautics and his other professional achievements, Hughes is perhaps most widely remembered for his highly-publicized descent into madness in later life. Nonetheless, Hughes' legacy is still visible through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and he remains one of the most influential aviators in American history.

The Hughes birthplace is disputed in various sources as either Humble, Texas or Houston, Texas. Hughes claimed his birthday was Christmas Eve, although some biographers debate his exact birth date. (According to NNDB.com, it was most likely "the more mundane date of September 24"; NNDB in turn refers to his baptismal records, but does not provide them for verification.) His parents were Allene Stone Gano Hughes (a descendant of Catherine of Valois, Dowager Queen of England, by second husband Owen Tudor) and Howard R. Hughes, Sr., who patented the two-cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for oil in previously inaccessible places. Howard R. Hughes, Sr. made the shrewd and lucrative decision to commercialize the invention, founding the Hughes Tool Company in 1909.

Hughes grew up under the strong influence of his mother, who was obsessed with protecting her son from all germs and diseases. From his father, Hughes inherited an interest in all things mechanical. Showing great aptitude in engineering at an early age, Hughes erected Houston's first wireless broadcast system when he was eleven-years-old. At twelve, Hughes was photographed in the local newspaper as being the first boy in Houston to have a 'motorized' bicycle, which he had built himself from parts taken from his father's steam engine. He was an indifferent student with a liking for mathematics and flying, taking flying lessons at fourteen and later auditing math and engineering courses at Caltech.