Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in 1902 and grew up on a farm near Little Falls Minnesota. Even as a child, he was interested in mechanics. Lindbergh attended the University of Wisconsin to study engineering but left after two years to perform daredevil stunts as a barm stormer He later trained to become a U.S. Army reserve pilot.
In 1919, New York City hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a prize of $25,000 to the first aviator to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. Before 1927, no one had won the prize. Lindbergh found the challenge inre- sistible. He helped design a special plane, which he named the Spirit of St. Louis, after the city whose businesspeople had raised funds for the flight. On the morning of May 20, 1927, Lindbergh left Roosevelt Field, near New York City, at 7:52. Thirty-three and a half hours and 3,600 miles later, he landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris. Shy and boyish in looks, the 25-year- old pilot became a worldwide hero for his daring feat.
In 1930, Lindbergh, who was also interested in biology, began working with Alexis Carrel, the head of experimental surgery at New York's Rockefeller Institute, Together the men devel oped a precursor to an artificial heart