Anthony Fokker

Anton Herman Gerard "Anthony" Fokker (6 April 1890 – 23 December 1939) was a Dutch aviation pioneer, aviation entrepreneur, aircraft designer, and aircraft manufacturer. He produced fighter aircraft in Germany during the First World War such as the Eindecker monoplanes, the Dr.1 triplane and the D.VII biplane.

After the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany to produce aircraft, Fokker moved his business to the Netherlands. There, his company was responsible for a variety of aircraft including the Fokker F.VII/3m trimotor, a successful interwar passenger aircraft. He died in New York City in 1939. Later authors suggest he was personally charismatic but unscrupulous in business and a controversial character.

Early life

Anthony (Tony) Fokker was born in Blitar, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), to Herman Fokker, a Dutch coffee plantation owner and Johanna Hugona Wouterina Wilhelmina Diemont. Some sources say that he was born in Kediri. At that time, Blitar was a part of the "Kediri Residency", a colonial administrative division the capital of which was Kediri. He was a cousin of the physicist Adriaan Fokker.

When Fokker was four, the family returned to the Netherlands and settled in Haarlem in order to provide Fokker and his older sister, Toos, with a Dutch upbringing.

Fokker was not a studious boy and did not complete his high school education. However, he showed an early interest in mechanics, and preferred making things, playing with model trains and steam engines, and experimenting with model aeroplane designs.

As a high school student, he devoted considerable effort to the development of a wheel that would not suffer from punctures; basically a wheel with a perimeter formed by a series of metal plates.