North Carolina Transportation: A Chronology of Invention and Technology
1925: Mrs. W. J. Matherly of Chapel Hill invents what is possibly the first automobile seat belt and child-restraint device. She places broad bands of cloth under her 11-month-old daughter’s arms and across her chest. Then she adjusts the bands so they are tight enough to hold the child captive yet loose enough for her to move her head and limbs.
1927: The Ford Motor Company manufactures 100,000 automobiles at a plant in Charlotte.
1927: Charles Lindbergh wins a prize of $25,000 for flying nonstop from New York to Paris, a 33-hour flight over water. He returns to the United States by ship and is welcomed by four million people and a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
1931: Raleigh becomes a rest and refueling stop on the first regularly scheduled airline passenger route from New York to Miami.
1935: German engineers begin developing early prototypes of jet engines. A poor decision by Adolf Hitler slows Germany’s introduction of jet aircraft into World War II until after 1944.
1936: The Intracoastal Waterway is completed through North Carolina.
1937: The German airship Hindenburg bursts into flames in New Jersey after arriving from Frankfurt, Germany.
1940: Piedmont Aviation is incorporated under North Carolina law. The airline company is headquartered at Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem.
1944: During World War II, Major George E. Preddy of Greensboro gains international fame as a flying ace by shooting down a record number of Nazi aircraft.
1948: North Carolinian Francis Melvin Rogallo invents the triangular-winged delta plane for hang gliding.
1949: The General Assembly authorizes $7,500,000 in bonds to improve the shipping ports at Wilmington and Morehead City.
1949–1953: More than 14,800 miles of rural roads are finally paved in Governor W. Kerr Scott’s campaign to “get the farmer out of the mud.”
1950–1953: While they were first used in World War II (1941–1945), helicopters become indispensable during the Korean War. When medics begin serving on helicopter crews and giving blood transfusions in flight, the number of wounded soldiers who die before reaching hospitals drops in half.