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    Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer
    Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer
    Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer
    Ebook182 pages49 minutes

    Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer

    By Charles R. Mitchell and Kirk W. House

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Charles R. Mitchell tracks Curtiss's dizzying ride from a village bicycle shop to record-smashing motorcycle races and city building in the Florida land boom.


    Glenn Curtiss beat even the Wright brothers (who sued him bitterly) to get pilot's license No. 1 in America. He teamed with Alexander Graham Bell, helped develop the moving wing part known as the aileron, introduced tricycle landing gear, made the first airplane sales, and turned aeronautics into a multimillion dollar business. His innovations ranged from the Curtiss Pusher to the hydroaeroplane, the flying boat, and the Curtiss Jenny. Curtiss, his engines, and his airplanes dominated the world of early aviation on this side of the Atlantic. Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer charts Curtiss's breakneck course across two continents, North America and Europe, setting speed and distance records, experimenting with military applications, always striving for a safer, faster airplane. Fostering both water flyers and shipboard landing, he became the Father of Naval Aviation. But even the skies were not wide enough for the busy brain of Curtiss.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJun 20, 2001
    ISBN9781439610633
    Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer
    Author

    Charles R. Mitchell

    Charles R. Mitchell, author of two other Arcadia books (Penn Yan and Keuka Lake and Hammondsport and Keuka Lake), is a professional photographer. He is associated with the Oliver House Museum in Penn Yan. Kirk W. House, a former teacher and school administrator, is directorcurator of the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. His writings have appeared in numerous aviation and general-interest publications. He is a historian member of the OX-5 Aviation Pioneers.

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      Book preview

      Glenn H. Curtiss - Charles R. Mitchell

      (1919–1930)

      INTRODUCTION

      Glenn Hammond Curtiss received America’s first pilot’s license while both Wright brothers were still actively flying. His peers in the Aero Club knew him as the first man to fly an exhibition flight in the western hemisphere and as the first man to win an international air speed prize. They knew him as the man who had created the first practical float plane and the first U.S. naval aircraft. Curtiss had already earned the second pilot’s license in France. He had gained permanent possession of the Scientific American trophy by winning it three years running. He had made the first long-distance flight in America—150 miles from Albany to New York City, with one stop for refueling. He trained pilots from across the globe in his flying schools and thrilled the crowds with his exhibition teams. He was probably the leading airplane manufacturer outside Europe.

      Before his airplane days, Curtiss supplied engines for America’s first airships. Before the airship days, he was one of the most successful motorcycle racers and manufacturers in the country. Before that he tinkered with bicycles, set up acetylene lamp systems, sold harness, raised rabbits, took photographs, and showed no particular signs that he was going to bust the new 20th century wide open.

      He was 33 years old, had been in the airplane game for three years when he got license No. 1, and had 19 years to live. Behind him lay 18 months of association with Alexander Graham Bell. Ahead lay years of bitter lawsuits by the Wright brothers, Augustus Herring, and others, with accusations of patent theft and corporate malfeasance. The Great War would rocket him from near bankruptcy to a $6 million fortune almost overnight.

      Finding the postwar aviation business not very interesting (and perhaps also finding it beyond his eighth-grade schooling), he would develop and market streamlined travel trailers, helping to create yet a third industry for the American century. He would develop the cities of Miami Springs and Hialeah, successfully weathering the Florida land boom and its subsequent bust. At his death he would return to his village to lie among old friend and neighbors, next to his father, his grandparents, and his infant son. Visitors from around the world often ask to see the grave site. When they do, they ask, Is that all?

      His Hammondsport friends actually thought that the quiet monuments were too much—G.H., they said, would have found them pretentious.

      Who was Glenn H. Curtiss, and where did he come from? He was born where he was buried, in the village of Hammondsport in New York’s Finger Lakes region. His minister grandfather and his harness-dealer father both died when he was four; his younger sister, Rutha, went deaf at age six. Even as a child Curtiss was known for meticulous planning and unusual mechanical skill. Beginning in his teen years, he would display notable athleticism and an almost frightening sense of balance. As a teenager he lived in the big city of Rochester for several years while Rutha attended school there. Here he finished his own schooling, and here he worked for two of the period’s industrial-technical giants, Eastman Kodak and Western Union.

      When his sister entered boarding school and their mother remarried, the youngster returned to Hammondsport and his beloved grandmother Curtiss. While living with her, he raced bicycles throughout the area. He married, falsifying his age, perhaps to thwart his mother’s interference. Renowned as a fix-it man, he slowly turned his bicycle avocation into a career and quickly turned that career into a springboard for invention and entrepreneurship.

      He and his wife had close friends, but they were both quiet people, not to be found on the village social circuit. Both rode bicycles. Both would ride motorcycles, and both would drive cars. Catching the swelling wave of internal combustion, Curtiss was in the motorcycle business (and the motorcycle-racing game) by 1901. His records and his engines made him a national figure. Alexander Graham Bell called the young junior high graduate necessary to Bell’s own dreams of a practical flying machine.

      Curtiss was hard to work with, for his mind was always racing. Difficult to pin down to a decision, he would stop all production in his factory to try out

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