Jorge Alejandro Newbery Malagarie (27 May 1875 – 1 March 1914) was an Argentine aviator, civil servant, engineer and scientist. He died in an airplane crash on 1 March 1914, at the age of 38.
Family His father, Ralph Lamartine Newbery Purcell (born 1848) was a dentist who emigrated from Long Island, New York, and settled in Argentina after the American Civil War, in which he fought on the Union side of the Battle of Gettysburg and was recognized for his courage.
Biography Son of American-born dentist Ralph Newbery, Jorge was born 27 May 1875 in the family home on Florida Street, Buenos Aires. At the age of eight he visited the United States alone. Later, back in Argentina, he studied at Saint Andrew's Scots School, graduating from secondary school in 1890, and subsequently traveled to the United States to study engineering at Cornell University. In 1893 he continued his studies at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, where he was a student of Thomas Edison, and in 1895 earned a degree in electrical engineering. On returning to his home country he began working as the head of the "Rio de la Plata Light and Traction Company". In 1897 he joined the Argentine Navy as electrical engineer during the border conflicts with Chile. He worked as a swimming teacher at the Naval School, and in 1899 he was sent to London to acquire electrical materials. His naval career lasted until 1900, when he was named Director General of Electrical, Mechanical and Lighting Installations of the Municipality of Buenos Aires City, a public role which he would hold until his death. In 1904 he became Professor of Electrical Engineering at the National Industrial School (later the Otto Krause Technical School), which was founded and directed by the engineer Otto Krause in 1893. In the same year he travelled to the United States once more to attend the International Electricity Congress which took place in the city of Saint Louis, where he was vice president of the section on "Power and Light Transmission" and at which he presented an eighty-page work entitled "General considerations on the transfer of lighting services to municipal ownership", which would be included in the Annals of the Argentine Scientific Society.
Ruler of the skies: balloons and aeroplanes
Aerostatics and balloons
Jorge Newbery began wanting to rule the skies when he met the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873–1932). On 25 December 1907, Jorge Newbery and Aarón Anchorena crossed the Río de la Plata in the balloon El Pampero before landing in Conchillas, Uruguay. Although there had been a few previous balloon flights in Argentina, the crossing of the Río de la Plata became a popular event. El Pampero set out from the Sociedad Sportiva Argentina, located in Palermo, on the same land where Campo Argentino de Polo is located nowadays. A few days later, on 13 January 1908, the Aero Club Argentino was created, with Aarón Anchorena as president and Jorge Newbery as second vicepresident. The ACA was located on the Villa Los Ombúes estate of local business tycoon Ernesto Tornquist, in Barrancas de Belgrano, Buenos Aires (since torn down and now the location of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany). On 17 October his brother Eduardo (also an ACA member), together with Seargent Romero, went missing in El Pampero and their bodies were never found. These were the first two casualties in the history of flight in Argentina. Despite the tragedy and public opinion starting to consider balloon-flight to be excessively dangerous, Newbery prepared a new balloon, El Patriota, and revitalised aerostatics with the help of socialist representative Alfredo Palacios. One month after the death of his brother, on 24 November, Jorge married Sara Escalante.
On 9 April 1909, Newbery wrote the first newspaper article on aviation in Argentina. Entitled "Aeronáutica", the article was featured in the Buenos Aires El Nacional. By that time, Newbery was already a seasoned aerostat pilot, having flown these balloons four times over the Argentine landscape. He had not, however, been in or even seen a heavier-than-air craft before he wrote the article. While Newbery had promised both his mother and his wife that he would not attempt to fly again after his brother's aerial death, the article showed his family that he had broken that promise, resulting in his divorce from Escalante, with whom he had at least one child. Newbery flew an aerostat round-trip for the first time on 24 January 1909, making his second round-trip flight on 2 April. On 27 April, just eighteen days after publication of the aforementioned article, he was elected president of the same Aero Club Argentino which he had previously served as second vice-president. Newbery accepted, with the hope of turning around the club's dire financial situation, and continued as president until his death in 1914.
He soon acquired another balloon, El Huracán, with which on 28 December 1909 he broke the South American record for duration and distance by travelling 550 km in 13 hours, linking Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and reaching fourth place worldwide in terms of flight time and sixth place in distance. This balloon gave its name to one of the most popular football clubs in Buenos Aires, the Club Atlético Huracán, founded on 1 November 1908 and nicknamed "globo" (balloon). On 5 November 1912 he broke the South American altitude record, reaching 5,100 m in the balloon Buenos Aires. He took part in the Exposición Internacional del Centenario (1910) in Buenos Aires by making balloon ascents over the exhibition so that visitors could view the surrounding area of Palermo and the river. Newbery made 40 balloon flights in three years. There were other Argentine aviators at this time, such as Eduardo Bradley, Lieutenant Angel María Zuloaga, Aníbal Brihuega and Pedro Zanni. Later, in memory of his brother, he had a 2,200 cubic meter balloon called Eduardo Newbery built, the largest that had ever been built in Argentina. In 1916, Bradley and Zuloaga crossed the Andes for the first time in this balloon.
Aviation
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