The yachtsman who wept at the Wrights

W. Starling Burgess was a boat man first. His shipyard at Marblehead, Massachusetts, built racing yachts, and he would go on to design three America’s Cup defenders. But watching a Wright flight in 1908 undid him; he later wrote that tears came to his eyes. In 1910 he set up an aircraft company as an offshoot of the yard with Greely S. Curtis, a wealthy backer who became its treasurer and main shareholder, and Frank Henry Russell, who had run the Wright Company’s factory in Dayton.

America’s first licensed planemaker

On 1 February 1911 Burgess received a licence from the Wright brothers, the first licensed aircraft manufacturer in the United States. The terms were steep: $1,000 for every aircraft and $100 for every exhibition flight. In July 1911 Harry Atwood flew a Burgess-Wright Model F onto the White House lawn. The partnership soured when Burgess fitted floats to Wright designs, which the licence forbade, and it ended by mutual consent in January 1914. The company dropped the Curtis from its name the same month, to avoid confusion with Glenn Curtiss’s rival firm.

The aeroplane that flew hands-off

Burgess then bought the American rights to J. W. Dunne’s tailless swept-wing biplane, designed to be inherently stable. The first Burgess-Dunne flew in March 1914, and on 2 May 1914 one was flown with the pilot’s hands off the controls. The design won Burgess the 1915 Collier Trophy, and one became the first and only warplane of the Canadian Aviation Corps. Curtiss bought the company, and during the First World War Marblehead turned out hundreds of Curtiss N-9 seaplane trainers, until fire destroyed the main plant in November 1918.

Fabrieken

• Marblehead works · Marblehead, Massachusetts — Two plant sites; main facility destroyed by fire in November 1918

Mensen

• W. Starling Burgess · founder, designer — Yacht designer of three America’s Cup defenders; later worked with Buckminster Fuller on the Dymaxion car
• Greely S. Curtis · co-founder, treasurer — Main shareholder and financial and engineering adviser
• Frank Henry Russell · co-founder, production manager — Former manager of the Wright Company factory in Dayton

Records en primeurs

• First licensed aircraft manufacturer in the United States, 1 February 1911
• First US Army aircraft to demonstrate two-way air-to-ground radio, Burgess Model F S.C. No. 17, December 1914
• US altitude record of 10,000 ft by a Burgess-Dunne AH-10, 23 April 1915
• Collier Trophy 1915