Howard R. Hughes

It is most appropriate that UNLV's College of Engineering is named for Howard R. Hughes. One of America's great aviators, Hughes was known around the world as an aeronautical engineer who contributed to the design of many innovative aircraft.

He was also known as a film-maker; as the only stockholder in the huge Hughes Tool Company; as the creator of Hughes Aircraft Company, which became part of the Hughes Medical Institute; and as the man who built the globe-spanning TWA airline. He was, of course, a central figure in the growth of Las Vegas into an international resort destination. He spent most of the last years of his life in Las Vegas, where he owned an airport, a television station, a ranch, several hotel-casinos, and a great deal of valuable land.

It was in Las Vegas that he formed Summa Corporation, which in 1984, some eight years after Hughes' death, made the donation to UNLV's engineering program that resulted in the naming of the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering.

The replica of the H-1 Racer that hangs in the Great Hall of Engineering reminds everyone who passes through the hall that Hughes had an unusual talent for turning vision into reality.

Hughes, along with Richard Palmer, designed the H-1 to be the fastest land plane in the world. On September 13, 1935, he proved that the design was a success.

Taking off in the Racer from Martin Field, now the site of California's Orange County Airport, Hughes set a world-record speed of 352.39 miles per hour in the skies over Santa Ana, breaking the previous record of 314.32 held by Raymond Delmotte of France.

The replica that is suspended from the Great Hall's high ceiling was built by Leon Starr, who incorporated much of the fine detail of the original, right down to the flush-mounted rivets from the same batch that held down the polished-aluminum skin of the original airplane. The original aircraft is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.