I like to imagine the owners of my house just over a hundred years ago looking out a northeast-facing window to see history being made.
In those days this was part of a large farm with all the usual animals and crops, but a major part of the farm's income came from growing wine grapes, since Hammondsport at that time had dozens of wineries. From the house, vineyards stretched away toward the northeast before dropping off to the Keuka Lake valley out of sight below. The owners would have had a somewhat hazy view of the valley on the day I have in mind, had they glanced outside. It was a windy and drizzly Fourth of July here in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York.
Or perhaps, as I suspect, they were not home to look out the window. Knowing what was planned to happen "down on the flats" at the head of Keuka Lake, were they down there with a large majority of village residents and people from miles around? It was to be, after all, perhaps the most exciting day in Hammondsport's history.
Join me below the fold for the story of July 4, 1908 in Hammondsport, New York, and how it changed aviation history.
Almost five years earlier, in December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers had been the first Americans to fly a manned heavier-than-air machine. Since then, the Wrights had returned to their Ohio shop to continue work. In the meantime, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, along with four other engineers and inventors, had formed the Aerial Experiment Association, the AEA, in September 1907. Aside from Bell, the group was made up of two Canadians, Douglas McCurdy and Frederick "Casey" Baldwin, both engineers, an American Army lieutenant, Thomas Selfridge, and the inventor and gasoline-engine specialist from Hammondsport, New York, Glenn H. Curtiss. Their stated goal, as is evident from their name, was to experiment with heavier-than-air flight.
Originally based in Nova Scotia, Canada, the groups' first aviation experiment took place there in early December 1907. It was a glider made up of 3,393 tetrahedral cells, a geometric form Bell had been experimenting with for some time. Under Bell's supervision, the glider was built on floats, and towed across a lake by boat to get it airborne. The pilot was Thomas Selfridge; the glider, named Cygnet, rose to 168 feet and remained airborne for seven minutes. However, it was never cut free from the tow boat, and when it landed it was wrecked. But note the date -- December 1907. In a period of just fifteen months, some amazing advances would be made.
The AEA Planes and the Hammondsport Flights
Since winter had arrived in Canada, AEA moved its operations to Hammondsport, where Curtiss had a machine shop and manufacturing facility, as well as trained machinists. By this time Glenn H. Curtiss was known for two things -- gasoline motors and motorcycles. The plant in Hammondsport was where the latter were manufactured under the trade-name Hercules. There is more on Curtiss, the man, toward the end of this diary.
The group moved rapidly ahead, in the best tradition of inventorship -- late night brainstorming sessions, careful record keeping, and the willingness to try just about anything. This was a group that, when faced with adversity, picked themselves out of the rubble and tried again, usually the same day. The original intent of the group was to take turns designing and testing flying machines, and the next design was by Thomas Selfridge, pilot of the glider tested in Canada.
Selfridge's plane, Red Wing, was ready for testing on March 12, 1908, about three months after Cygnet. The test took place on the ice on Keuka Lake, with Casey Baldwin at the controls. Red Wing was a skid-mounted biplane, with a wingspan of slightly over 43 feet, and was powered by a 40 hp Curtiss V8 engine. The propeller was mounted behind the pilot, who sat on a little "bench" or board and was strapped into a complex cage of bamboo and wire. The silk covering the wings was painted in red (hence the name) because the inventors wanted their plane to be easily visible. The public and press had been invited; this flight was the first public demonstration of a engine-powered airplane in the US. The flight lasted for about 20 seconds, went 319 feet, and the plane rose to about 20 feet into the air. Then the plane crashed, the tail assembly buckled, and it was back to the drawing board (literally and figuratively) for AEA.
Next up was White Wing designed by Casey Baldwin. Several new ideas were added with this model, including ailerons, a three-wheel undercarriage for self-powered take off, and a laminated propeller in place of a solid wood one. This is the first use of ailerons on an American plane and maybe worldwide (there are some differences of opinion here); they were supposed to keep a turning plane more stable side to side. The ailerons were attached to a yoke-type harness around the pilot's shoulders, and he controlled their tilt by leaning from side to side. The plane followed the direction of the pilot's lean. It was also the first use of a wheeled undercarriage, and both turned out to be significant improvements over earlier planes. Developed over a period of two months since Red Wing, White Wing flew several times between May 18 and 23, 1908. The pace of development was picking up.
Incidentally, Glenn Curtiss had his first opportunity to pilot a plane on one of these White Wing flights -- on his 30th birthday, May 21, 1908. The flight set a distance record for the group of 1,017 feet. He said later that the plane was much more sensitive in the air than he had anticipated. which might account for some of the numerous crashes these early planes suffered. Control, both up and down and sideways, was an early problem in aviation.
From late May to late June of 1908 the group worked on a Curtiss-designed plane, which Alexander Graham Bell suggested naming June Bug, because of the way the wings were designed. In the insect, there is a large wing that doesn't move and a small one that does. Bell likened this to the large fixed wings on the biplane, and the separate movable ailerons attached at the ends. June Bug had a wingspan of slightly over 42 feet, a length of about 27 feet, and was again powered by an air-cooled V8 engine built by Curtiss.
Other improvements over previous planes included "doping" the wings with a mixture of paraffin, gasoline and turpentine to reduce air resistance. Yellow ocher was a part of the mix, again for visibility against the background of the green hills surrounding the valley. June Bug was the first plane to have steerable landing gear.
After a number of test flights beginning June 21, AEA contacted The Aero Club of America, in New York City, who were custodians of a newly announced aviation trophy which AEA thought they could win. The prize, sponsored by Scientific American magazine, was to be given to the first plane to fly one kilometer, using an unassisted takeoff. The inventor of the plane was to announce ahead of time the venue and date of the flight, and observers would be sent. Curtiss picked July 4, 1908, at Hammondsport for June Bug's official trial for the Scientific American Trophy.
As I mentioned in my introduction, July 4, 1908 was, in Hammondsport, a drizzly day with rain showers in the offing. Some of the journalists and others from New York City got a little impatient by late afternoon; had they come 300 miles by train up here to the sticks, just to have to turn around and go back again? One of Curtiss's friends who owned a winery broke out the bubbly, which calmed them down considerably. By 7:30 pm, the sky had cleared, and June Bug was rolled out. Curtiss took his place on the bench in front of the propeller and engine, the "finish line" flag was erected, and the first trial took place. Unfortunately, the horizontal stabilizer in the tail of the plane had been bumped in the roll-out, and while the plane took off nicely, it soared much higher than expected, then landed far short of the goal. Undaunted, the crew rolled it back to the start line, adjusted the stabilizer in the tail, and tried again. This time, June Bug flew beautifully! And how! Straight and true, about 20 feet off the ground, it passed the official one kilometer flag and kept on going, past a group of small trees and out of sight to a safe landing 5,360 feet away from the start. The flight lasted for a total of one minute 40 seconds and was 1.6 kilometers long. Glenn H. Curtiss had won the Scientific American Trophy for the first time, but not the last. This flight was a big step forward, as Curtiss's later achievements would show.
In an almost anticlimactic event, a fourth AEA plane, Silver Dart, was flown first in Hammondsport, then on February 23, 1909, it was the first plane to fly in Canada. Overall, Silver Dart made over 200 flights, one of them over a distance of more than 20 miles.
AEA disbanded March 31, 1909; they had met their stated goal of building a practical plane. In addition, the group's original contract to work together was for one year, and they had worked together for almost a year and a half. The September 1908 accidental death of Thomas Selfridge (ironically as a passenger in a Wright airplane piloted by Orville Wright as a demonstration for the United States Army) played a part. The group had worked so closely together that Selfridge's death was a personal blow to all. They parted friends, stayed close personally for the rest of their lives, and all endorsed Curtiss's plans to continue in the field of aviation.
Before we go on, it's important to recognize the significance of the flights made at Hammondsport in 1908. Prior to the flight of June Bug, most people viewed airplanes as a case of "boys and their toys." Sure, a few daredevils could take a contraption up in the air, it would probably make a few short hops before crashing somewhere in the vicinity, and then the inventors would tinker some more and try again. But regular, scheduled, dependable flight, something you could count on, something you could go and see with your own eyes -- nah -- it would be twenty years or more, if then, before something like that came along. That prevailing view had to be reconsidered after July 4, 1908.
Notable Curtiss flights - 1909 and 1910
In March, 1909, Glenn Curtiss's new plane, Gold Bug (also known as Curtiss #1) won the Scientific American Trophy for a second time. This was Curtiss's first independent design. The race took place on Long Island and the flight was 25 miles long. This plane was the first to be a commercial proposition; it had been ordered by the Aeronautic Society to be used in flying exhibitions. Gold Bug was longer (over 33 feet) than June Bug, but the wings were shorter at just under 29 feet, the plane was lighter, and the engine, was a 4 cylinder Curtiss, producing 25 horsepower. Maximum speed was 45 miles per hour.
Next, Curtiss took up the challenge of international competition. The Gordon Bennett Cup was to be offered at the first international flying competition in Reims, France. The original plan was to enter the Gold Bug, but the plane crashed before this could happen, and Curtiss built a modification and named it Reims Racer. The plane was again lighter than its predecessor, though for the race Curtiss used a 50 hp engine and a longer propeller. Curtiss's plane was the only American entry out of a field of 22 aviators, some of whom brought as many as five planes. (Curtiss's sole "spare part" consisted of an extra propeller; his "crew" were two Hammondsport boys!) There were ten manufacturers competing; the Wrights were represented by three planes built by French companies under license from the Wrights. There were a number of events at the week-long Grande Semaine d'Aviation, but Curtiss held off until the finale. This was an event consisting of single-plane timed-trials of two laps around a triangular course for a total of 10 kilometers. Curtiss's Reims Racer, the only all-American entry, came away with the prize. His time around the two laps was 15 minutes, 50.4 seconds, just six seconds ahead of the second-place entry. Curtiss's average speed was 47.06 mph, a new airspeed record.
One last flying event needs to be listed, because it has significance far beyond its time. This was Curtiss's 150 mile Albany to New York City flight on May 29, 1910, in the Albany Flyer to win the Hudson-Fulton Prize. To quote from an article about this event on the Curtiss Museum site:
Joseph Pulitzer, the wealthy publisher of the New York World, had offered a $10,000 prize to the first aviator to fly from Albany to Manhattan. According to the rules, the airplane could make two stops along the route, provided the journey occurred within a 24-hour period.... Pulitzer's challenge stood for nearly a year before Glenn Curtiss stepped forward to take it up.
The Albany Flyer was a biplane with flotation devices, including airtight metal pontoons at the end of the lower wings and air bags on the frame. This precaution was taken because the Hudson is a wide river below Albany, and Curtiss was to fly over water the whole of the race. The flight was officiated by the Aero Club of New York, just as were the flights of June Bug and Gold Bug. Curtiss made one stop for gasoline, at Poughkeepsie, 87 miles from takeoff. He made the total flight with a flying time of 2 hours 51 minutes, and in addition to the Pulitzer award was also granted a third citation on the Scientific American Trophy for the 87-mile non-stop leg.
Glenn Curtiss did not stop there, but I must. The Curtiss Aeroplane Company was founded in 1910 immediately after the Hudson River venture and the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company was created from that in 1916. He went on to develop the seaplane and worked with the Navy to establish naval aviation. During World War I most of the company's facilities were moved to Buffalo, although the plant at Hammondsport had a staff of 3000. Planes produced during that war were the Jenny (a flight trainer) and the Curtiss flying boat, used for anti-submarine patrol. After the war the Curtiss NC-4 was the first plane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. It took several legs, including one of 1,200, from Newfoundland to the Azores. This was in 1919, 9 years before Lindbergh's non-stop flight, but only 11 years after June Bug. It's amazing to contemplate the advancement in aviation during those 11 years, and to realize that such a large part of that development was done by Glenn Curtiss.
Glenn Curtiss, the Man
Curtiss was a small-town boy. He was born in 1878 in a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, and the large part of his aviation career was linked to that village. In a time when education through college was not the norm, perhaps his leaving school at the end of eighth grade was not so unusual. The fact that this did not deter him from thinking, dreaming, trying and excelling at what he chose to do, still in his home community, certainly would be unusual today. To me he is an outstanding example of the entrepreneurial spirit.
Glenn Curtiss died from a blood clot related to surgery for appendicitis in 1930. He is buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery, just down over the brow of the hill we can see from our windows. It's not far from there to the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, where his memory is ever young.
Credits:
There are a number of books about Curtiss. The two I relied on to write this diary are the most recent, Unlocking the Sky, by Seth Shulman, and Hell-Rider to King of the Air, by Kirk W. House. Kirk was, for a number of years, curator of the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, and has written probably the most insightful volume about Curtiss as a man.
I also depended on the Websites of the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, and two areas of the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission,here and here. Wikipedia proved invaluable as a source of photos and summaries about each of the planes or flights, though I verified information from there with my other sources.