Robert Edison Fulton Jr.

Robert Edison Fulton Jr. (April 15, 1909 – May 7, 2004) was an American inventor and adventurer. He is known for having traveled around the world on a motorcycle and for several aviation-related inventions, among his 70 patents. Fulton was also a professional photographer.

Born in Manhattan, New York on April 15, 1909 and named for Thomas Edison, who was a friend of his father, Robert Fulton Sr., a president of Mack Trucks. His maternal grandfather, Ezra Johnson Travis, ran stagecoach lines across the old west after the Civil War and his uncle, Elgin Travis, who took them over from his father, eventually converted the stagecoach routes into bus lines, which became Greyhound Bus Line. As a teenager he was in the elite when he traveled by commercial aircraft from Miami, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, in 1921, and then to Egypt when Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1923. He attended middle school at Le Rosey in Lausanne, Switzerland for two years, then went to Exeter and Choate, graduated with a degree in architecture from Harvard in 1931, and spent a further year of architectural study in Vienna, at the University of Vienna. Then, at age 23, he traveled 25,000 miles (from London to Tokyo in 18 months) on a twin-cylinder Douglas motorcycle, to study architecture around the world. Along the way he shot 40,000 feet of film of his travels, over the year and half period.

Upon his return he detailed his adventures in a book, One Man Caravan, telling of being shot at in the Khyber Pass by Pathan (Pashtun) tribesmen, avoiding Iraqi bandits, a night's stay in a Turkish jail, and being a guest of Indian rajahs. He went on a lecture tour of the United States, showing his film footage and telling of his journeys. In 1983 he produced, edited, and released, with his filmmaking sons, a 90-minute film compiled from his home movies, The One Man Caravan of Robert E. Fulton Jr. An Autofilmography. Later in life, he revisited his motorcycle journey in another film program retelling of the epic trip, "Twice Upon A Caravan."

...
Wikipedia