Authors: Seth Shulman
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher (and contemporary of Glenn Curtiss’s), is famous for noting that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But Santayana also proposed that “history is always written wrong. So it always needs to be rewritten.” The sentiment propelled me through many partisan accounts of aviation’s early history and will, no doubt, encourage others to revise my interpretations and correct my mistakes.
Whenever possible, this work derives from primary sources, such as letters, cables, photographs, and journalistic accounts from the period. Many of these materials reside at two archives: the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, New York, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland. Of particular help at the Curtiss Museum were copies of the
Bulletin of the AEA,
transcriptions of private cables sent from Jim Smellie’s pharmacy, collected oral histories from some of Curtiss’s relatives and coworkers, as well as numerous collections of newspaper clippings about Curtiss and voluminous, uncataloged boxes of postcards, photographs, and memorablia related to his life and work. I also benefited from a rare copy of Curtiss’s 1912 autobiography,
The Glenn Curtiss Story,
especially its detailed, first-person account of the 1910 Hudson River flight. In addition, the cav
ernous museum houses a full-scale replica of the
June Bug
and many original Curtiss artifacts, including his early motorcycles and flying boats.
Particularly helpful primary sources in the Smithsonian’s collection include Charles Walcott’s personal photographic record of the aerodrome reconstruction, Alexander Graham Bell’s voluminous and wide-ranging aviation scrapbooks—technically labeled the “Early Aeronautical Newsclipping (Alexander Graham Bell) Collection—1906–1911”—and important selections from the correspondence of Octave Chanute. Also helpful were the Glenn H. Curtiss Collection, the Samuel P. Langley Collection, the Early Aeronautical Patent Collection, and the impressive William Hammer Collection, including many rare programs, schedules, pamphlets, and even menus from some of aviation’s most important meets and gatherings.
As useful as these resources were, my book also relies heavily on many excellent books and articles about Curtiss and early aviation. First among them is Cecil R. Roseberry’s meticulous biography,
Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight.
Interested readers are referred to Roseberry’s far more thorough treatment of Curtiss’s life. Roseberry is to be especially commended for interviewing many of the last remaining individuals with personal reminiscences about Curtiss, something that is now, alas, impossible to replicate. Other noteworthy volumes on Curtiss include Alden Hatch’s 1942 work,
Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation,
and Clara Studer’s 1937 book,
Sky Storming Yankee.
Published works of special note also include: Octave Chanute’s
Progress in Flying Machines
(1894), a book that more than any other conveys the ferment in aviation research around the turn of the century; the collected papers of Albert Zahm; Samuel Pierpont Langley’s posthumously published account of the aerodrome’s development; the Wright brothers’ collected papers; Charles Gibbs-Smith’s authoritative volumes on early aviation history—especially the primary source material
he collected about the 1909
Grande Semaine d’Aviation
in Rheims, France; Jack Carpenter’s quirky but useful volume
Pendulum,
a compendium of excerpted source material about Curtiss, the Wrights, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, and others of the period; David Baker’s encyclopedic
Flight and Flying: A Chronology,
offering dates and capsule descriptions of every important milestone in aviation from 850
B.C
. through 1991; and Phil Scott’s
The Pioneers of Flight: A Documentary History,
a readable and well-chosen selection of writings by many of the important early figures in aviation history including Cayley, Ader, Mouillard, Bleriot, and many others.
A complete bibliography follows:
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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