Piper

The company began in 1927 as the Taylor Brothers Aircraft Manufacturing Company in Rochester, New York, and was renamed Taylor Brothers Aircraft Corporation in April 1928, shortly before Gordon Taylor was killed flying one of the brothers' own designs. Local businessmen, among them the oil engineer William T. Piper, persuaded it to move to Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 1929.

Bankrupt in late 1930, it survived with Piper's backing; in December 1935 he bought out C. G. Taylor. After a fire destroyed the Bradford factory on 16 March 1937 the company moved into an old silk mill at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and that year it became the Piper Aircraft Corporation.

Piper stayed at Lock Haven through the Second World War, building military versions of the J-3 Cub as the L-4 Grasshopper. The Korean War brought large orders for military Cubs again in 1950.

After the war the market shrank, and at the end of 1948 Piper bought the Stinson Aircraft Company. In 1955 it acquired land at Vero Beach, first used as a design centre under Fred Weick; the PA-25 Pawnee crop-sprayer was its first design there, and the PA-28 Cherokee the first type to enter production.

The PA-31 Navajo cabin twin flew in September 1964. Today's range runs from the Cherokee's descendants to the M600 turboprop.

In 1969 the Piper family agreed to sell to Bangor Punta, which led to an eight-year court battle with the losing bidder, Chris-Craft Industries, settled by the Supreme Court in 1977. Hurricane Agnes nearly destroyed the Lock Haven plant in June 1972.

By 1991 the Lakeland factory had been sold and closed, the workforce had fallen to 45 and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It emerged in 1995 as New Piper Aircraft.