Our industry was born on the 7th of November 1910. It was on that day that money changed hands for the transportation of goods by airplane for the first time ever. 200 pounds of silk were entrusted to one of those daring new flying machines only recently invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright, and safely delivered after a one-hour, 60-miles flight across the North-Eastern USA, an event that will be duly celebrated this month.
But half-hidden behind the truly marvelous figures of the Wright brothers and the courageous young pilot, who commandeered this strange new flying machine through the morning skies to (of all places) Columbus, Ohio, there stands a man who played a part in the advent of aviation that can hardly be overestimated.
I am of course talking about Max Morehouse, the merchant who by a stroke of genius devised the plan to use the legendary Model B as a means to transport and promote his valuable merchandise.
This may seem trivial today, but at that very moment in history, this was as groundbreaking a thought, as you could reasonably expect from someone who bought and sold cloth for a living.
In fact, it is only with people like Morehouse that great inventions move from "brilliant but what use is it?" to "I use it - do you too?".
Take computers. The worldwide demand for them was estimated at six units, according to the leading experts in the field. Then Steve Jobs and Bill Gates laid their hands on them. Or the fax machine: the Germans invented it but had no idea, how to place it on the market. The Japanese obviously did.
In both cases entrepreneurs appeared on the scene who saw possibilities where no one else did. They all lived, knowingly or not, by the famous quote of Charles F. Kettering, a first rate inventor in his own right, who once said: "I am interested in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life."
So, here´s to Max and all the others out there who constantly teach us to live in the future, to see the amazing possibilities of new technologies, to envision things that are just not there yet. And if we bring just a little bit of their spirit into our industry there simply is no reason why the next hundred years of air cargo should not be as glorious and successful as the first.
