High above the California desert, a needle-nosed aircraft dropped from the belly of a B50 mother ship, kicked in its rocket engines and flashed up to 126,000 ft., higher than man had ever flown before. The plane was Bell Aircraft Co.'s X-2 research plane (see SCIENCE), and the news of its record-breaking flight was a farewell accolade to the man who built it. At 62, Bell President Lawrence Dale Bell, for 45 years a pioneering airman, announced that he was moving over to board chairman, leaving the operation of the company to...
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