Leland Snow was an American aeronautical engineer known for designing and developing agricultural aircraft. He was the founder and president of

Air Tractor Air Tractor Inc. is a United States aircraft manufacturer based in Olney, Texas. Founded in 1978, the company began manufacturing a new agricultural aircraft derived from the S-2B aircraft (designed by founder Leland Snow's previous compa ...

. Snow began designing his first aerial application aircraft, the S-1, in 1951 when he was 21 years old. That airplane remained in production until 1957, after which Snow introduced the S-2A and S-2B models and built a factory in

Olney, Texas Olney is a city in Young County, Texas, United States. Its population was 3,007 in 2020. History On May 18, 1951, the city was devastated by a violent F4 tornado. Thomas P. Grazulis noted this tornado was possible F5 on the Fujita scale. Geograph ...

, which opened in 1958. Snow sold his company,

Snow Aeronautical Snow Aeronautical was an American aircraft manufacturer established in 1956 in Olney, Texas by Leland Snow to manufacture and market agricultural aircraft of his design. History Leland Snow, a graduate of the aeronautical engineering program ...

, to

Rockwell-Standard Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. R ...

in 1965 and started working as the vice president of its Aero Commander division. Snow founded Air Tractor in 1972 after resigning from Rockwell. The construction of AT-300 began in late 1972, which later became the AT-301. Air Tractor's first turbine model, the AT-302, was introduced in 1977. Snow died on February 20, 2011, in

Wichita Falls, Texas Wichita Falls ( ) is a city in and the seat of government of Wichita County, Texas, United States. It is the principal city of the Wichita Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Archer, Clay, and Wichita counties. Accordin ...

References

External links

Official website
2011 deaths People from Olney, Texas 20th-century American inventors American businesspeople {{US-inventor-stub