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George Augustus Page 

[[image No. 107 - black & white photograph of George Page and John Guy Gilpatric standing in front of flying boat]]

[[image No. 108 - black & white photograph of the Flying boat "Big Fish"]]

[[image No. 109 - black & white photograph of Page sitting on the nose of the "Big Fish" flying boat]]

[[caption]]Standing before a Heinrich Military Biplane on Long Island, ca. 1916, George Page (left) and John Guy Gilpatric are about to take off and demonstrate the first General Electric Intercom system (107). Page in flying Boat "Big Fish" (108-109), first "pop art" passenger craft.[[/caption]]

"Its been a lot of fun," George says, referring to his career as a design engineer. "But a lot of work." In over a half century, he has worked with more than 150 types and models of aircraft; 130 with Curtiss and Curtiss-Wright. During World War II, he was Director of Engineering for C-W.

The storybook prologue of his epic career began in Mineola, and Baldwin, N.Y., when he enrolled in a 1913 flying school operated by the Heinrich brothers, Arthur and Albert. Everything went so well, flying and all, that George married their sister! During the next four years he worked for his in-laws, the Moisant Aviation Co., and Aeromarine, the start of his mechanic-draftsman-engineering contributions. Following World War I, he had a pioneering experience, literally and figuratively, with what can only be called the world's first hallucinogenic airline. Known as ATO, for American Trans Ocean, their Curtiss hydroplane was given a turn-in, and turned-on paint job of the time, and became Big Fish. 

As if that wasn't enough, "I didn't have a very high regard of my own abilities as a pilot," George recalls. "I joined ATO at West Palm Beach, Fla,. late in 1919 as a mechanic and pilot." The first ATO run in its regular Florida-Bahama service was on February 24, 1920. George left the following year to join Curtiss-Wright. In 1951, he joined Aeronca, and although he was retired officially--with 23 patents to his credit, he still serves his last employer as a consultant. 

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

George Augustus Page: born Sewickley, Penn., December 14, 1891

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