Airways

The newly-invented airplane proved its utility during World War I. When the war was over, the War Department continued to develop aviation for military purposes. The Post Office Department started the first air mail routes. And entrepreneurs began to examine the possible commercial uses ofthe airplane. Very few people today, however, remember that the federal agency charged by Congress in 1926 with overseeing the birth pangs of civil aviation was the Lighthouse Bureau in the Department of Commerce. The Bureau and its predecessors had a century and a half of experience in lighting seaways.