Charles A. Levine
American businessman (1897–1991)
Charles Albert Levine (March 17, 1897 – December 6, 1991) was the first passenger aboard a transatlantic flight. He was ready to cross the Atlantic to claim the Orteig Prize but a court battle over who was going to be in the airplane allowed Charles Lindbergh to leave first.
Early life
Levine was born on March 17, 1897, in North Adams, Massachusetts. He was born to Jewish immigrant parents—his father, Isaac Levin (or Levine), emigrated from Vilna (then in the Russian Empire) and was of Russian Jewish parentage. He joined his father in selling scrap metal, later forming his own company buying and recycling World War I surplus brass shell casings. By 1927, at age 30, he was a millionaire.
Columbia Air Liners and the record flights
Levine and Giuseppe Mario Bellanca formed the Columbia Aircraft Company. Levine hired pilots Bert Acosta, Erroll Boyd, John Wycliff Isemann, Burr Leyson, and Roger Q. Williams at $200 a week to perform a series of publicity record attempts for the company.
Levine entered the competition for the Orteig Prize for the first person to complete a nonstop flight from New York to Paris. His Bellanca designed prototype aircraft, named Columbia, was ready for weeks, The co-pilot for the effort, Lloyd W. Bertaud, was displaced to accommodate Levine and went to court to be reinstated.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charles A. Levine” is american businessman (1897–1991). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charles, Levine and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american businessman (1897–1991)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4256476. VIAF identifies the subject as 234395488. The Library of Congress control number is n87121434. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897, 1991 and 1927.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles A. Levine”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Charles A. Levine primary sources, Charles A. Levine archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles A. Levine”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Charles A. Levine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.