The fastest man in the world

On 24 January 1907, on the hard sand at Ormond Beach, Florida, a 28-year-old from Hammondsport, New York, opened the throttle of a motorcycle carrying an air-cooled V-8 engine he had built himself. Glenn Curtiss was timed at 136.36 mph. The newspapers called him the fastest man in the world, and no human being on any vehicle went faster until 1911. Curtiss had left school after the eighth grade, raced bicycles, and built his first motorcycle carburettor from a tomato soup can. The engine on that Florida record machine had been meant for flying. Within two years it would take him into the air and into one of the longest feuds in aviation.

The June Bug and the Wright brothers

Alexander Graham Bell called Curtiss the greatest motor expert in the country and, in 1907, made him a founding member of his Aerial Experiment Association. Curtiss designed the group’s third aircraft, the June Bug, and on 4 July 1908 flew it 5,080 ft at Hammondsport to win the Scientific American Trophy — the first pre-announced public flight of an aeroplane in America. It also won him a lawsuit. The Wright brothers, who had avoided flying in public, sued in 1909 over lateral control, and the patent war ran until the First World War forced the industry into a patent pool. In court the Wrights won every case in the United States.

Teaching the Navy to fly

In 1909 Curtiss and Augustus Herring founded the Herring-Curtiss Company, and that August Curtiss flew to Reims and beat Louis Blériot by six seconds to take the first Gordon Bennett Cup. On 14 November 1910 his demonstration pilot Eugene Ely flew a Curtiss pusher off a platform on the cruiser USS Birmingham; two months later Ely landed one on USS Pennsylvania. That winter Curtiss ran a flying camp at San Diego, trained Lt Theodore Ellyson, US Naval Aviator No. 1, and on 26 January 1911 flew the first American seaplane. The Navy’s first aircraft, the A-1 Triad, was a Curtiss. Americans still call him the Father of Naval Aviation.

Flying boats for a transatlantic prize

Water became the Curtiss speciality. With the British naval officer John Cyril Porte, Curtiss developed the stepped hull that let a flying boat break free of the surface, and in 1914 the department-store heir Rodman Wanamaker paid for the twin-engined America to chase the Daily Mail prize for an Atlantic crossing. War cancelled the attempt, but the Royal Navy bought the design, Porte refined it into the Felixstowe boats, and Curtiss built 478 of the Model H family. Less proudly, in 1914 Curtiss also rebuilt and flew Samuel Langley’s failed 1903 Aerodrome for the Smithsonian, which used the flights to argue that Langley, not the Wrights, had built the first machine capable of flight; the modifications were later exposed.

The Jenny and 21,000 workers

The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company was incorporated on 13 January 1916, moved its headquarters to Buffalo and, when America entered the war, was bought by the car maker Willys-Overland. Its JN-4 Jenny trainer taught a generation to fly: 6,813 were built, and after the war cheap surplus Jennies carried the barnstormers who introduced America to flying — and gave the stamp world the Inverted Jenny. By 1918 the company claimed to be the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, with 18,000 workers in Buffalo and 3,000 in Hammondsport, and more than 100 aircraft leaving the lines in a single week. In May 1919 its NC-4 flying boat became the first aircraft to fly the Atlantic.

Racers, Hawks and the merger

Peace cancelled the contracts. In September 1920 the company was refinanced, Glenn Curtiss sold out and moved to Florida to build towns — Hialeah, Miami Springs and Opa-locka — and the financier Clement Keys took control. Curtiss still flew fast. Its racers won the Pulitzer Trophy in 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1925, and the Schneider Trophy in 1923 and 1925, the last with Jimmy Doolittle at the controls of an R3C. Its D-12 engine inspired the Rolls-Royce Kestrel, and its Hawk biplanes equipped Army and Navy squadrons. On 5 July 1929 Curtiss and the Wright companies, the old enemies, merged into Curtiss-Wright. Glenn Curtiss died a year later, at 52.

Továrny

• Hammondsport works · Hammondsport, New York — Birthplace of the company on Keuka Lake; 3,000 workers by 1918
• Buvolí rostliny · Buffalo, New York — Headquarters and main production from 1916; 18,000 workers by 1918
• Curtiss Engineering Company · Garden City, New York — Design subsidiary set up 1916; plant operated until 1932
• Burgess Company · Marblehead, Massachusetts — Subsidiary 1916–1919
• Curtiss Aviation School · Long Branch Aerodrome, Toronto Township, Ontario — Flying school 1915–1917, taken over by the Royal Flying Corps Canada

Lidé

• Glenn Hammond Curtiss · founder, pilot, engine designer — 1878–1930; held US pilot licence No. 1
• Augustus Moore Herring · co-founder — Partner in the 1909 Herring-Curtiss Company; later sued Curtiss
• Alexander Graham Bell · mentor, founder of the Aerial Experiment Association
• John Cyril Porte · Royal Navy officer, flying boat collaborator — Worked with Curtiss on the America; developed the Felixstowe boats
• B. Douglas Thomas · designer — Hired from Sopwith in 1914; designed the Model J that led to the Jenny
• Eugene Ely · demonstration pilot — First take-off from and landing on a ship
• Clement Melville Keys · financier — Took control in 1920 and built the group that became Curtiss-Wright
• Frank Henry Russell · executive

Rekordy a prvenství

• Unofficial world speed record for any vehicle, 136.36 mph on a Curtiss V-8 motorcycle, 1907
• First pre-announced public aeroplane flight in America, June Bug, 4 July 1908
• First Gordon Bennett Cup, Reims, 1909
• First long-distance flight between two US cities, Albany to New York, 29 May 1910
• First take-off from a ship (1910) and first landing on a ship (1911), Curtiss pusher flown by Eugene Ely
• First transatlantic flight, NC-4, May 1919
• Schneider Trophy wins 1923 (CR-3) and 1925 (R3C)
• World airspeed record, R2C, 1923