On this day in Aviation history in Blitar, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) Herman Fokker and his wife Johanna Fokker became the parents of a boy. They named him Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker.
Anthony Fokker on the tail of the last Fokker aircraft in KLM service
4 years later the family moved back to the Netherlands and settled in the city of Haarlem. The interest of Anthony in aviation was started when heard about the flights performed by Wilbur Wright in France in 1908. In 1910 he went to so the Technical School in Bingen, Germany, to become an automobile mechanic. However, with his interest in flying, he transferred to a school Mainz and build his first aircraft that same year.
He became "world-famous" in the Netherlands on the 1st of September 1911, when he flew his aircraft "de Spin" (the Spider, named like that because of the bracing used the reinforce the wing structure) around the 'Grote Kerk' (Big Church) in Haarlem.
When the first world war broke out German government took control of the aviation industry, and also the Fokker Aeroplanbau company awaited this fate. At the end of the war, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, aircraft manufacturing was no longer allowed. Anthony Fokker moved back to the Netherlands and started what later became Fokker Aircraft.
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