Howard Robard Hughes (1905-1976) was a flamboyant entreprenuer who used an inherited fortune to achieve a national reputation in the motion picture and aviation industries, remaining in the news in later years because of his paranoid concern for privacy.

Howard Robard Hughes was born in Houston, Texas, on December 24, 1905, the only child of Howard Robard Hughes and Alene Gano Hughes. He attended private schools in California and Massachusetts, Rice Institute in Houston, and the California Institute of Technology. His mother died when Hughes was 16 and his father when he was 18, leaving him an orphan but with an estate worth $871,000 and a patent for a drill bit used in most oil and gas drilling that brought large revenues to the family's Hughes Tool Company that manufactured the bit. Hughes left school to take control of the company, using its profits to finance a variety of projects which he hoped...