Steve Fossett

American businessman, record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer

Steve Fossett is remembered in technology for work that changed what came after it.

The record lists Steve Fossett as American businessman, record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer.

Steve Fossett was born at Jackson in 1944. His recorded nationality is the United States. He was educated at National University of San Marcos and Stanford University.

The twentieth century made work collective, expensive and political, with consequences that reached well beyond the people doing it.

He worked as explorer, financier and balloonist.

Technology is judged by adoption: an invention nobody uses is a curiosity.

Recognition followed: National Aviation Hall of Fame (2007).

Working from the United States shaped what was possible - the audiences within reach, the institutions that would have him, the language the work first appeared in.

Steve Fossett died in 2007, aged 63. What survives is the work, which is the only durable form of a reputation.

Achievements

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