author
James Means
1853–1920
Best known for the popular “James Means $3.00 Shoe,” he later turned his energy toward one of the boldest ideas of his era: human flight. His writing and publishing helped spread early aeronautical thinking at a moment when aviation was still largely a dream.
1 Audiobook
The Problem of Manflight
by James Means
About the author
Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, James Means was an American shoe manufacturer who built a successful business around the widely advertised James Means $3.00 Shoe. After retiring from manufacturing while still relatively young, he devoted much of his time and money to aeronautics and became an energetic supporter of early flight research.
As an author and editor, he is especially associated with The Aeronautical Annual, a late-19th-century publication that gathered important writing on aviation and helped circulate new ideas about flying machines. That work has made him a notable figure in the history of aviation literature as well as an entrepreneur with unusually wide-ranging interests.
Records from museums and archives describe him as an aviation pioneer, industrialist, and promoter of flight. A confirmed portrait image was not available from the sources I checked, so no profile image is included here.