Captain Washington Irving Chambers, USN (April 4, 1856 – September 23, 1934) was a 43-year, career United States Navy officer, who near the end of his service played a major role in the early development of U.S.Naval aviation, serving as the first officer to have oversight of the Navy's incipient aviation program through the Bureau of Navigation. In that capacity from 1910 to 1913, he consulted and worked with early civil aviation pioneers Orville Wright and Glenn Curtiss; organized the first airplane landing (1910) and take off (1911) from a ship in collaboration with pioneer aviator Eugene Ely; recruited the first naval aviators; established aviator training; oversaw the first budget appropriation of $25,000 from which he purchased the first aircraft for the Navy; designed a catapult to