Glenn Curtiss

Born in 1878 Hammondsport New York, Glenn Curtiss was raised by his mother and grandmother after both his father and grandfather passed away when Curtiss was four. Fascinated by how things worked, as Curtiss grew older, he walked around town with a screwdriver, fixing squeaky doors and broken door bells, and after he family moved to Rochester New York, Curtiss fell in love with the national craze of bicycling, employing the new machine to deliver telegrams for Western Union, or his frequent six hour rides to Hammondsport to visit his grandmother.

Married Daredevil

After his marriage to Lena Pearl Neff when Curtiss was 20, the couple opened a bike shop in Hammondsport, which quickly spread to a second successful location in Bath New York. Becoming a champion bicycle racer by age 21, Curtiss began building motorcycles and powerful engines under his own Hercules brand, selling his product as far afield as New Zealand and South Africa. In 1907, Curtiss traveled to Ormond Beach Florida for a motorcycle race, where his powerful eight cylinder monster of an engine made him the fastest man alive when he went 136.4 mph in slightly more than 26 second’s.

Learns to Fly

Expanding into aviation engines after meeting Captain Thomas Baldwin, who dreamed of a motorized dirigible, by 1909, G.H. Curtiss Manufacturing Co. had completely transitioned from building motorcycles to building aircraft engines, which were subsequently used in the 1908 Red Wing, the White Wing and the June Bug of that same year, where Curtiss flew the plane to a height of 5,090 feet with over a 1,000 people on hand to witness the flight. The Silver Dart was to follow in 1909, until Curtiss switched his attention to sea planes, leading the U.S. Navy to purchase fourteen of his Triads as Curtiss opened flying schools for Naval pilots in both California and Florida, making Curtiss the “Father of Naval Aviation.”

The Jenny

Curtiss also built the land-based JN-4D “Jenny,” which became the go-to training aircraft of World War One, in which an estimated 95% of Canadian and American pilots learned to fly. Retiring from aviation in 1920, after Curtiss and the adversarial Orville Wright had both left their respective companies, the Curtiss-Wright Corporation was formed in the summer of 1929, later building some of the most successful warbirds of the Second World War, including the P-40 Warhawk and the Navy’s SB2C Helldiver. Curtiss passed away in Florida on July 23, 1930, making Glenn Curtiss, one of the giants of early aviation.