autoevolution
 

Step Aside Elon Musk, This Man Was the Original Eccentric Billionaire Aviator

Love him, or Elon Musk has his sights eternally on the stars. But don't even think for a single solitary second that he's the first of his kind among eccentric, tortured genius aviators.
Musk vs Curtiss 34 photos
Photo: Google Creative Commons (Fair Use) (Both Images)
Inventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own MuseumInventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own Museum
Before SpaceX, before Elon Musk, even before the venerable Howard Hughes and the Spruce Goose, Glenn Hammond Curtiss wrote the genius ultra-rich inventor/aviator playbook. Today, Glenn Curtiss has his own museum dedicated to his illustrious life and career in his birth town of Hammondsport, New York. You can't say that about Elon, can you?

Though, that'll probably change soon enough. In any case, Glenn H Curtiss was born on May 21, 1878, and named in tribute to the town of his birth. Glenn, standing for the long and bounded valley in the north end of the town, and Hammond, derived from Hammondsport, New York. His family name, Curtiss, has been traced back to his paternal grandfather, who was a member of the clergy in Upstate New York's Methodist Episcopal church circles.

Curtiss only had an eighth-grade education by the time he entered the mechanical trade, roughly the equivalent of barely completing high school back in the late 19th century. Even so, Glenn Curtiss was remarkably skilled in mathematics, a quirk that would serve him well throughout his life. His first real job outside of tinkering on his own time was with the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company, which we know today as the Kodak Company. Curtis was a massive photography buff and audiophile outside of his main pursuits. But it was bicycles, not cameras, that brought Curtiss his first fortune.

His career began as a bike announcer for Western Union before opening his own bicycle repair and retail shop in Hammondsport. Like so many eccentric engineers after him, Elon Musk included, Curtiss had an insatiable appetite for speed. As a competitive cyclist, Curtiss demonstrated a racer's instinct that competitors in all categories of the sport would go on to perfect. He garnered many first-place awards for cycle racing all across the U.S. and quite a few impromptu races between himself and other bike couriers.

Inventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own Museum
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution

Before long, Curtis owned two bike repair shops, one in Hammondsport and the other in nearby Bath, New York, as well as a machine shop in Addison, New York. But the day Glenn Curtiss all but assured his place in history came right at the turn of the 20th century in 1899. It was the day he discovered the internal combustion engine. Scarcely 25 years after German engineer Nicolaus Otto invented the modern mass-producible internal combustion engine, Glenn Curtis realized they could be used to make his own bicycles much, much faster.

According to the staff at the Glenn H Curtiss Museum, Curtiss's first single-cylinder two-stroke engine wasn't all that much to write home about, and his second was more powerful but way too heavy for his modified bicycle chassis. Only after endless tinkering did Curtiss devise the perfect single-cylinder engine for his new brand of motorbike, the Curtiss Hercules. Because Curtiss was a racer at heart, he promptly took his creation to a sanctioned all the way downstate in the NYC borough of Brooklyn.

Curtis proceeded to reach a podium finish and begin taking orders from people across the country for a Hercules bike of their own. But also includes Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. His next venture was to create the world's very first V-twin engine, several years before both Indian and Harley Davidson had two-cylinder engines of their own in 1909. Doing so not for a motorcycle but for a design for a powered airship devised by Mr. Captain Thomas Baldwin.

Baldwin was renowned nationwide for his traveling hot air balloon circus, in which he and his performers dazzled audiences with stunts performed in and around hot air balloons at altitudes of a few dozen feet or more. It wouldn't take long for Curtiss to start applying this same engine to his motorcycles. With a single invention, Glenn H Curtiss cemented his legacy as a pioneering inventor and, as a result, an American hero who helped spawn both the motorcycle and aeronautical communities.

Inventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own Museum
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
It wouldn't take long for other inventors like Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first practical telephone company who founded what's known today as the AT&T company. Bell promptly ordered one of Curtiss's engines for his own uses. After working with Captain Baldwin for two years, their shared motorized airship invention took to the skies on June 28, 1907, only three or so years after the Wright Brother's first powered flight.

As it happened, Wilbur, and especially Orville Wright, fancied Curtiss as a bit of a thorn in their side. While Wright seemed dead set on crude wing warping as the future of aeronautical control as was featured on the Wright Flyers, Wright set about helping to create things like ailerons, elevators, and rudders. Essentially, they were some of the world's first sets of aeronautical control surfaces.

In fact, when the Wright Brothers approached Curtiss to demand licensing fees for what they thought was their own intellectual property, Curtiss politely but sternly refused. Essentially, he told them both to get lost. This act mildly annoyed the more level-headed Wilbur but enraged the notoriously moody and very easily irritable Orville. But in spite of it all, Curtiss kept the good vibes rolling with his finest invention to that point.

After good luck building two, three, and even four-cylinder engines for his motorbikes, Curtiss was ready for the next giant leap, the mighty, gargantuan Curtiss V-8. In the same way that the Dodge Tomahawk was a Dodge Viper V10 engine with a motorcycle attacked overtop a century later, the Curtiss V-8 took a 269-cubic inch (4.4-liter) V8 engine and expertly laid the chassis of one of his motorcycles overtop of it. With a verified top speed of 136.36 miles per hour (219.45 km/h), the Curtiss V-8 became not only the world's fastest motorcycle but the fastest vehicle of any kind in the world in January 1907.

Inventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own Museum
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
Soon afterward, the world's new fastest man moved away from motorcycles to focus solely on aerospace. Advances in Airplane, Seaplane, aeronautical engines, and aircraft carrier takeoff and landing proved to be the building blocks for what would become the U.S. Army Air Corps, later the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy's aeronautical division. His June Bug airplane, of which the Curtiss Museum has a full-scale replica, flew over 5,000 (1,524) feet with over 1,000 people watching. One of if not the very first publicly viewed manned, powered flights in world history in 1908.

The American Aerial Experiment Association, or AEA, was something like an early 1900s equivalent to what NASA is today. So to say, a group of the brightest engineering minds in the science of aerospace of the day and develop novel inventions for the field of aviation. The group, led once again by Alexander Graham Bell, aided in Curtiss's pursuits in airplane development, leading to novel designs like the Silver Dart, equipped with one of the first liquid-cooled engines, and the A-1 Triad, one of the first seaplanes to teach Naval aviators how to fly.

By this point, Curtiss was one of the wealthiest men in America. While Carnegie and Rockefeller ensured he couldn't vie for the richest man in the world title like SpaceX and Tesla's frontman has recently. Even so, he owned vast swaths of property, colossal mansions, and even larger estate plots all over the state of New York, from Buffalo to Long Island and many places besides. He even purchased all the land for and then founded three cities in the state of Florida. These cities are Hialeah, Opa-Locka, as well as Miami Springs, all in South Florida. So to say, this was something like the early 20th-century equivalent of purchasing all of Twitter on a whim.

Curtiss topped it all off by siring the J-4 Jenny, one of if not the very first American airplane to see service in the First World War. As many as 95% of American and Canadian airmen learned to fly in the Jenny during the war. After the war, Curtiss busied himself by moving his family from New York to Florida and using his frequent camping trips in both New York and elsewhere to design what was the world's first practical towable Recreational Vehicle.

Inventions of Glenn H Curtiss at His Own Museum
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
Sadly, the world was robbed of Glenn H Curtiss's genius on July 23, 1930, in Buffalo, New York, from complications from appendicitis and subsequent botched appendectomy. He was only 52. In so many ways, Glenn Curtiss was what Elon Musk is to Americans today. A somewhat controversial but nonetheless undisputed pioneer in the science of aerospace. If Musk's SpaceX Starship ever steps foot on the surface of the Moon or Mars, Elon is certainly inclined to thank Mr. Curtiss for laying the foundations for what would become his life's work.

We can't wait to show you so much more from our trip to the Glenn H Curtiss Museum right here on autoevolution.
If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories