Jerry Lederer, the aviation visionary who made flight safety a discipline instead of an ideal, died on 6 February in California at the age of 101. Lederer, an engineering graduate of the New York Guggenheim School of Aeronautics in 1924, pioneered the first filmed crash tests to find out why so many US Air Mail Service pilots died in post-crash fires in otherwise survivable accidents. In 1940 he directed the National Transportation Safety Board's predecessor the US Civil Aeronautics Board Safety Bureau, inventing the first flight data recorders.
Source: Flight International
