Frank Edward Boland (July 31, 1873 – January 3, 1913), James Paul Boland (August 20, 1882 – December 19, 1967) and Joseph John Boland (May 27, 1879 – September 12, 1964) were early aircraft designers from
Rahway, New Jersey
Rahway () is a city in southern Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. A bedroom community of New York City, it is centrally located in the Rahway Valley region, in the New York metropolitan area. The city is southwest of Manhattan ...
who started the Boland Airplane and Motor Company.
Biographies
They were the children of James Francis Boland (1834–1913) and Catherine Julia Kavanaugh (1843–1925).
They had set records for bicycle racing in 1898.
In 1904, Frank and Joseph, started a business servicing bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles in Rahway.
Frank Boland was killed in on January 23, 1913, during an exhibition flight in
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
. They worked with tailless aircraft that were early predecessors of
flying wing
A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...
s. A scale model of their plane is in the
Smithsonian.
In 1914, the
Aeromarine Plane and Motor Company of
Avondale, New Jersey, took over the manufacturing rights of all Boland airplanes and engines.
Legacy
E.T. Wooldridge writes: "The Boland brothers were a relatively small, but extraordinary, part of early aviation history in the United States. Frank supplied the enthusiasm, ingenuity, and self-taught flying ability; Joseph provided the mechanical genius to transform ideas into some tangible, workable form; and James had the business sense so often lacking in ventures of that sort."National Association of Rocketry
The National Association of Rocketry (NAR) is a non-profit tax-exempt scientific organization dedicated to consumer safety, youth education, and the advancement of technology in the hobby of sport rocketry in the United States. Founded in 1957, t ...
at the regional and national levels, setting no fewer than two US model rocket
A model rocket are small rockets designed to reach low altitudes (e.g., for model) and be recovered by a variety of means.
According to the United States National Association of Rocketry (NAR) Safety Code, model rockets are constructed of p ...
performance records,
Aircraft
* Boland 1911 Tailless Biplane
* Boland 1911 Conventional Biplane
* Boland 1912 Tailless Biplane
* Boland 1913 Tailless Flying Boat
* Boland 1914 Monoplane Flying Boat
* Boland 1914 Biplane Flying Boat
Engines
* Boland V-8
See also
* Wright brothers
* Wittemann brothers
* Voisin brothers
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boland Brothers
People from Rahway, New Jersey
Members of the Early Birds of Aviation