Why Lockheed aeroplanes have curves
where others have straight lines.

“
Robert Gross named it the Electra, in honor of the first aircraft designed by his firm, and bestowed his direct creative input on it. Statler tells a story of Gross coming around, as was his habit, to look over the engineers' shoulders. Statler had a three view of the Electra on his board; at that time the vertical surface of the aircraft was squared off. Gross looked at it and said, 'It looks too much like a DC-7. Do you have one of those curvy things?' Statler opened his desk drawer and took out a French curve, which Gross then used to change the tip of the vertical surface to an elliptical shape. When he'd gone, Statler put a note on the drawing that read,

This vertical tail contour drawn by Robert Gross. Don't anybody ever change.		 ”


Extracted from "Beyond the Horizons - The Lockheed Story"
by Walter J. Boyne (St. Martin's Press, New York 1998):


FOOTNOTE

Robert Gross was a highly respected, and indeed revered, President of Lockheed. Bill Statler was one of the Electra design team who clearly shared this view for he welcomed with obvious pride that which a professional engineer might otherwise regard as insufferable interference. Although this anecdote sounds like the stuff of urban myth, author Walt Boyne quotes the story from first hand sources.



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