Frederick J. Hooven

Frederick J. Hooven was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1905. When he was 5 years old he met Orville Wright and by age 15 was a regular visitor to the Wrights’ Dayton laboratory. He graduated from MIT in 1927 and went to work for General Motors as an engineer and inventor. In 1935 he became Vice President and Chief Engineer of the Radio Products Division of Bendix Aviation Corp. where he developed the Hooven Radio Compass, later known (and still known) as the Automatic Direction Finder or ADF, and installed one of the protoype units in Earhart’s Electra in 1936. By the time of his death he held 53 patents in fields as diverse as avionics, bombsights, automotive ignition and suspension systems, photographic typesetting, and medical technology. In 1986 he was posthumously awarded the Robert Fletcher Award for “distinguished achievement and service” by the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College.

• Born: March 5, 1905. Died: February 5, 1985.
• 1979 Election citation for the National Academy of Engineering: "Development of the first heart-lung machine, first electronic typesetting, first controlled system for unmanned flight, and an improved automotive front-wheel drive system."
• The Hooven Report explains how Earhart removed the Hooven radio compass (now known as an Automatic Direction Finder or ADF) and replaced it with a lighter but more primitive system.