Pioneers

Chapter 8 Glenn Curtiss

Chapter 9 World War I, NACA,

and the End of the Wright Patent Litigation

Chapter 10 Airmail Story

Chapter 11 Horsepower

lenn Curtiss’ efforts were to overlap the Wrights’ and, as has been said, he was to take off where they left off. He began as a young man excelling in bicycle racing in 1896, becoming champion for western New York State. In 1900 he started his own bicycle shop in Hammonds – port, N. Y., where he built a version he called the Hercules. He took to installing on these bikes a 1-cylinder gasoline engine kit, which he bought and assembled. Due to its poor construction, he began to modify this engine and before long he had designed and produced a motorbike with his own 2-cylinder air-cooled engine design that was handily defeating all competing models. In 1902 he formed the G. H. Curtiss Manufacturing Com­pany, where he produced the Hercules motor­cycle, a favorite all over the United States due to the excellence of its engine (see Figure 8-1). He set an unofficial speed record of 64 miles per hour in 1903 at Yonkers, N. Y. with the Hercules and a world official speed record of 136.27 miles per hour at Ormond Beach, FL four years later atop his V8, 268-cubic inch, 40-horsepower model.