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Battery Park, New York City, on February 6, 1912. At first A. C. Duff rode as a passenger, carrying the camera, then Coffyn had the idea of fixing the camera on the plane, to be operated electrically in such a manner that he could turn it on or off at will. This worked perfectly and through February he circled the Statue of Liberty, the Singer Building and lower Manhattan, flew over and under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, around Ellis and Governors Islands, and escorted incoming vessels up the harbor. His almost daily flights were witnessed by thousands of people. This work was indeed notable, for they probably were the first movies ever made from the air, and were shown all over the country at that time.
In early March Wilbur Wright came to see him and observe his work. During his extensive flying there Coffyn carried many passengers, members of his own family and city officials. On March 20th Coffyn was seriously injured in a taxicab smashup in New York, sustaining a fractured skull and other injuries that hospitalized him for some time. Wilbur Wright visited him in the hospital to express his regrets concerning this serious misfortune. In mid-July Robert Collier engaged Coffyn to do some occasional flying with his Wright hydro while he recuperated from his long confinement, and after an easy summer Coffyn went with the Burgess Company and Curtis in December, 1912, to be a test pilot and take charge of their flying school activities.
His first assignment was to conduct initial and official flight tests of the new Burgess Coast Defense Hydro at Marblehead, Massachusetts. This was a new twin-float machine using Burgess-Wright wings, but with a fuselage, standard Wright pusher propellers and a 6-cylinder Sturtevant engine. Coffyn satisfactorily completed these tests on January 20, 1913, following which the plane was shipped to the winter school at Palm Beach, Florida, where he trained Army and Navy officers Lts. Call, Ellington, Murray and Comdr. Richardson on this new plane.

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