Elrey Borge Jeppesen

Elrey Borge Jeppesen (January 28, 1907 – November 26, 1996) was an American aviation pioneer noted for his contributions in the field of air navigation. He developed manuals and charts that allowed pilots to fly much more safely.

He was born on January 28, 1907, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His parents were immigrants from Denmark. His father was a cabinetmaker. He grew up in Odell, Oregon, before moving to Portland. As a child, he watched eagles flying for hours and flying became his obsession. In 1921, then 14-year-old Jeppesen got his first taste of flying when a barnstormer took him up in a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" for a ten-minute flight for $4.

At the age of 18, he joined Tex Rankin's Flying Circus "as a ticket taker, a prop turner, a wing walker and an aerial acrobat". He soloed after two hours and 15 minutes of flying lessons and purchased his own Jenny for $500, using money borrowed from customers on his newspaper route. For two years beginning in 1928, he worked for Fairchild Aerial Surveys, flying photographers over Mexico in a De Haviland DH-4. That same year, the United States government issued its first pilot's licenses; Jeppesen had Oregon's 27th license, and it was signed by Orville Wright. In 1930, he joined Boeing Air Transport as an airmail pilot. According to one source, on May 15, 1930, he was the pilot of the flight carrying the first stewardess, Ellen Church. (Heinrich Kubis was the first male flight attendant in 1912.)

Pilots at that time depended on Rand McNally automobile road maps, railroad tracks and landmarks to find their way. Jeppesen purchased a ten-cent notebook and started writing down detailed notes about his routes. He even climbed hills to determine their height and collected telephone numbers of farmers willing to provide weather reports. Word got around about his "Little Black Book", and soon he was giving copies to his fellow pilots. As demand picked up, in 1934, he founded Jeppesen & Co. in the basement of his Salt Lake City home to sell his information for $10 a copy.

...
Wikipedia