Mead ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown. The English "mead" – "fermented honey drink" – derives from the Old English "meodu" or "medu", and Proto-Germanic, *"meduz" (source also of Old Norse mjöðr, Danish mjød, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch mede, Old High German metu, German Met "mead"). "Madh", and the related terms "mad" (मद, مد) and "madira" (मदिरा, مدِرا), also mean alcohol. These words are all derived from the
George J. Mead Jennie Henrietta Mathilda LeMann Mead. He graduated from the Choate School in Wallingford, CT in 1911 and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but left in 1915 without graduating, owing to health problems. Mead worked for well over a year at Sterling Engine Company of Buffalo, NY. His next job was with the Crane-Simplex company of New Brunswick, NJ, builders of the Simplex automobile. Crane-Simplex later merged with the Wright-Martin Aeronautical Corporation where Mead was in charge of the experimental division of the engineering department. In 1919 he became chief engineer of what was now the Wright Aeronautical Corporation upon the