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14    AVIATION    May, 1911

Progress of Glenn H. Curtiss
By Geo. B. Harrison
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[[image - black & white photograph of Glenn Curtiss]]

Glenn Curtiss' record in aviation is one of which all Americans may well be proud. Although May 21st of this year marks his thirty-third birthday he holds a large number of "firsts" in aeroplane history, and is constantly adding to his list.

Curtiss was the first man to try an aeronautical motor at high speed, for his famous mile in 26 2-5 seconds at Ormond Beach, in January, 1907, was with a motor built especially for use in a flying machine. He is the first winner of international aviation contests; and his achievement at Rheims is one that will always redound historically to America's credit. Curtiss is the first winner also of notable prizes offered to aviators in America, but it is due to the paucity of opportunity in this country that he has not added to his list, which is headed by the Scientific American trophy and the New York World's $10,000 check for the flight from Albany to New York. He was the first man to build and sell a commercially successful American aeroplane, responding to the initiative of the New York Aeronautical Society with the machine which brought Charles F. Willard into fame.

The Curtiss aeroplane was first in speed, first at cross-country flying, first in public exhibition, first in capturing the few bona fide prizes available to American aviators, and no doubt of pre-eminent importance, first to develop flyin and alighting on the water. Curtiss made the first long flight over water when he flew down the Hudson River, he attacked perhaps the most important phases of aeroplane advancement when he made his preliminary experiments on water-alighting at Lake Keuka, and he is easily first as against any aviator in the world in his experiments and those of Eugene Ely and J. A. D. McCurdy, his assistants, in lighting on the water and flying from and to battleships.

As Augustus Post has aptly put it, "as seen over the ocean, it is easier to think of the aeroplane in its true mechanical character of a boat with horizontal sails, assisted by an auxiliary screw or fan." The importance of this feature of what Curtiss has accomplished is not fully appreciated as yet, even by men familiar with progress in aviation, for it initiates lines of action certain to do more for the status of the aeroplane than on any other line. And in this work as in much else that he has done, Curtiss has gone ahead and proved possible what nearly everybody else declared to be impracticable.

Curtiss is a man of many friends, for his personality insists upon this. He is above all a gentleman, and there is no amount of notoriety that could possibly spoil him or render him unwilling to show every patience and courtesy to anyone who might come in contact with him. Yet, below his gentle and willing personality there exists the dogged courage to try out the new and unknown