LICENSE NUMBER 1

Flight Journal, Apr 2004 by House, Kirk W

THE TRUE FATHER OF AVIATION?

SOME PEOPLE WERE APPALLED. Some were delighted. Others were merely surprised. But in 1911, the Aero Club of America deliberately passed over Orville and Wilbur Wright and put the Wrights' sharpest competitor at the head of the list for the new pilot's licenses. License number 1 went to Glenn Curtiss.

Coming in aviation's backdoor

In 1904, Glenn Curtiss was a prospering motorcycle maker and recognized worldwide for his successes as a racer. Then, "Captain" Tom Baldwin paraded into his shop and announced that he had just flown America's first hydrogen-filled airship and that a Curtiss engine powered it. Curtiss vaguely remembered Baldwin's order for an engine but wasn't aware it was going on a flying machine.

Baldwin described how he made a complete circle at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. He pumped the motorcycle man's hand, extolled the virtues of the engine and begged for more. This was 25-year-old Glenn Curtiss's introduction to the aviation business-a field he had always considered to be populated by crackpots and cranks. His beliefs were confirmed when he discovered that aviators would pay four times as much as motorcyclists for the same engine. But the quiet Curtiss liked the flamboyant, 54-year-old Baldwin, who moved his airship works to Hammondsport, New York, and settled down with Glenn and Lena Curtiss in their home.

At times, Curtiss traveled with Baldwin and helped his ground crew with his airship exhibitions. During their travels, this odd couple spent an evening in Dayton talking shop with the Wright brothers, and Baldwin later chided his young colleague for asking too many Questions of their hosts.

Legend later inflated this 1906 chat into an industrial-espionage "fishing expedition," but Curtiss was only a tagalong. He was Baldwin's buddy, and maker and tender of the airship engines that Baldwin hoped to sell to the Wright brothers. In fact, it would be another year before Curtiss went up in one of Baldwin's dirigibles; clearly, building aircraft was still far from his mind. Incidentally, the ever paranoid Wrights showed the "Hammondsporters" neither plane nor plans, though they did produce a photo.

"It is delightful"

Curtiss didn't take the flying plunge until June 28, 1907. Six months earlier, he shocked the world by rocketing along Ormond Beach at more than 136mph on the first V-8 motorcycle ever made. (He originally created the engine for an airship.) There wasn't much left for him to conquer in the motorcycle arena, so his active mind began to look elsewhere for inspiration.

Watched by the usual enthusiastic crowd that turned up for any aero action in Hammondsport, Baldwin tested a new dirigible. During this outing, Curtiss hinted that he might like to take the thing up himself. Minutes later, the effusive Baldwin had the young man aloft-perched with legs spread wide on narrow longerons while hovering over the four-cylinder, in-line, air-cooled engine.

Because payloads were limited in those days, Glenn's first flight was also his first solo flight. The airship couldn't lift both Baldwin and Curtiss. He tooled around over the blue waters of Keuka Lake and the green flats of Hammondsport, ringed by ridges and vineyards. Curtiss later offered this straightforward evaluation for his neighbors: "It is delightful." Later, he said of the pleasures of flying, "... it is impossible to describe and unnecessary to explain." He never changed his opinion that the world of aviation was overstocked with cranks, but his restless spirit found a new passion on that sunny summer day.

This left him wide open to the coaxing of Alexander Graham Bell, who had finally lost patience waiting for the Wright brothers to release details of their inventions. They kept their work under wraps as long as they could for patent purposes. Telephone inventor Bell proposed that Curtiss join him and three others in the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) to attack the practical problems of flight. So it was Glenn Curtiss, director of experiments for the AEA, who on July 4, 1908, wheeled out the biplane June Bug in front of a 1,000 spectators, movie cameramen and photographers. In startling contrast to the secretive manner in which the Wrights had conducted their activities, an assortment of newshounds and representatives of the Aero Club, the Army, the German government and Scientific American waited with pencils poised. With Curtiss at the controls, June Bug rumbled along the makeshift grass runway at the Pleasant Valley Wine Co. It lifted off, passed the 1-kilometer stake and landed almost a mile down the valley; it handily won the first Scientific American trophy for advances in aviation. This was only 44 days after his first flight in an airplane.

A wild year

The Aero Club cited this feat three years later to justify having given Curtiss license number 1. He had flown in public exhibitions before the Wrights or anyone else had, and so, in the Aero Club's opinion, he deserved the honor. During the following six months, Curtiss helped Baldwin build the first powered aircraft in the U.S. military (airship SC-1), and he contributed to the AEA Silver Dart-the first airplane flown in Canada.