Karl Otto Lange

Who was Karl Otto Lange?

Karl Otto Heinrich Lange, Dr.-Ing. was a pioneer in aviation, atmospheric science, engineering education, and biomedical engineering.

Dr. Karl Otto Lange joined the meteorology faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1931. After his arrival, according to THE TECH, MIT's newspaper, daily weather observations from the ground level to a height of more than three miles above Boston will be made by meteorologists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an airplane equipped to record temperature, barometric pressure and relative humidity.

To carry out this work, MIT secured funds to purchase a Cessna cabin monoplane powered with a 120 horsepower Warner engine. The daily flights of this plane were part of a research program designed to gain new knowledge to aid in weather forecasting by measuring the variation of temperature and moisture at various altitudes in different air currents.