Wright-Martin


Wright-Martin was a short-lived aircraft manufacturing business venture between the Wright Company and Glenn L. Martin.
Company officials merged their respective organizations, the Wright Company and the Glenn L. Martin Company, in 1916.
The company continued and escalated the Wright brothers patent war with other aircraft manufacturers, until its resolution -- under duress from the government, in 1917, at the start of U.S. involvement in World War I -- by the cross-licensing agreement developed and managed through the Manufacturers Aircraft Association.
A license-built version of the Hispano-Suiza 8 was manufactured by the company which was used by Vought VE-7, VE-8, Boeing NB-2, and Loening M-8.
Martin soon resigned, dissolving the Wright-Martin joint enterprise within a year. The company was renamed Wright Aeronautical in 1919, and shifted from manufacturing aircraft, to manufacturing aircraft engines -- developing the pivotal Wright Whirlwind engines which changed aviation dramatically.
Glenn Martin continued with development of his Glenn L. Martin Company, which continued as a major aircraft manufacturer until the 1950s and early 1960s, when it also began developing rockets, missiles and spacecraft. In 1961, the company merged with the American-Marietta Corporation to become industrial conglomerate Martin-Marietta -- which, in 1995, merged with Lockheed to become today's Lockheed-Martin, one of the United States's three remaining major large-aircraft manufacturers.