Tag Archives: Glenn Curtiss

Winter’s Tales — Part 1

Leave a reply

For most of our time as a species, winter has been the time to gather by the fire, and tell stories. So who are we to scorn the tradition of millennia? This time, with stories ABOUT our winters. And there’ll be more to come!

1790s – Weeks Away From Home
Imagine yourself as an early White farmer on Mount Washington, between Bath and Hammondsport. You’d cleared your land, and worked like a dog, and gathered into barns, but now – you had to SELL your crop.
So you’d wait till the snow lay deep, load up your sledge with grain, hitch up the horses or the oxen, and set off for Naples, which had the nearest mill.
And it took you weeks to get there, through the snow in a roadless forest. Once you had your grain ground to flour, you could head on home, moving a little faster with your lighter load. As long as the snow held out.

1816 – The Year Without a Summer
The 1815-1816 winter wasn’t especially bad, but it never ended. Snow fell and frost formed every month of the year. The creeks still froze in April, and started again in September. Fruit died on the trees, and crops in the ground. People despaired that the sun was going out, but 1817 brought a normal summer, for the cloud of volcanic dust, undetectable at the time, had settled back to earth.

1880s
One day Lena Curtiss took her young children, Glenn and Rutha, out to Pleasant Valley Cemetery to lay flowers on the grave of the children’s father. But as Glenn stepped down from the wagon Billy the horse lurched forward, throwing Glenn to the ground and running the wagon over his head. The caretaker’s family patched him up and mother rushed him home to Hammondsport, where Grandma took over. She thought. For Ed Garton, the hired man, had promised to take Glenn skating that afternoon, and Glenn proclaimed that rather then being put to bed, he was still going skating. Grandma Curtiss was not a woman to mess with, but her young grandson was already showing some of the daring and determination that would one day make him a millionaire. She fixed Glenn up with a new poultice, he went skating with Ed, and came home no worse than he’d been when he left.

1905 – The Hornellsville Horror
On February 1, ladies from Hornell’s Universalist Church bundled up and set off in two sleighs for Arkport to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Just after dark they headed homeward.
The first sleigh crossed a railroad track safely, but riders realized that an oncoming train was far nearer than they’d thought. They shouted frantically to their following friends, but the horses spooked on the track. The engineer tried to brake, but the Angelica Express slammed into the stalled sleigh. The animals escaped unscathed, while the driver and three women were injured. The other ten women… including Mrs. Graves, whose birthday it was – were killed.

1900s – Not Really
We often hear that old-time auto owners used to fill their radiators with water from Seneca Lake – because Seneca Lake never froze in the winter.
If anybody really did that, of course, they had a sad disappointment coming – physics being what it is. But they were also bucking, or just ignorant of, history! Given the gigantic mass of the water in Seneca… which has the greatest volume of any of he Finger Lakes – Seneca does not freeze over AS OFTEN as the other lakes do. But it does fact freeze some winters, and photos prove it. As far back as the 1800s.

“Merchants of Death”?

Leave a reply

World War I begins what I call “the Hell Years” (copyright!) – the Great War, the Spanish influenza, the postwar recession, Prohibition, the resurgent Ku Klux Klan, the Great Depression, and World War II.

Here at home, many Americans did very well on the Great War – so much so that some postwar analysts traced our declaration of war to the “Merchants of Death” who made fortunes making, selling, and financing military supplies.

That vastly oversimplified things, but many ordinary people legitimately made good money for a short time, right here in the Finger Lakes, in new industries that blossomed with the war, and would largely shrivel after it.

The most obvious example was GLENN CURTISS. He had just started producing a decent training plane, the Curtiss Jenny, and the British quickly ordered 250, then ran the numbers up into thousands. They also wanted seaplanes, and although the Curtiss shop in Hammondsport was quickly running 24-6, it was noplace near enough. He built, bought, or leased huge new factories in Buffalo, as the Hammondsport plant switched over to all engine production, especially the 90-hp OX-5, to get the Allies into the air.

Glenn employed almost 3000 people just in Hammondsport, but even with his Buffalo plants it still wasn’t enough. The Willys-Morrow factory in Elmira made Curtiss engines and Liberty engines under license, employing women and old men to help make up the numbers. We hear a lot about Rosie the Riveter in World War II, but we should also remember Wanda the Welder (copyright!) from World War I. Women had been working in American factories ever since the factories were created. Now more than ever, with millions of young men in uniform, they were needed. Neta Snook, who later taught Amelia Earhart to fly, worked in Elmira as an expediter for the British government.

As for the old folks, there was no social safety net in those days. You worked until you couldn’t and then you probably died pretty quickly, because you couldn’t pay for food, clothing, housing, or medical care. If you couldn’t work you also had no economic value, so the economy got no benefit from you continuing to hang around.

Up in Geneva, boatmaker Fay & Bowen built hulls for Curtiss seaplanes.

Several fellows who had cut their teeth at Curtiss had opened the Thomas Brothers Aeroplane Company in Bath, but they, like Glenn, had to expand when the war broke out in 1914. Six months later they had shifted to the larger town of Ithaca and forged a merger with Morse Chain Company. Thomas-Morse manufactured airplanes, especially the Thomas-Morse “Scout,” in respectable numbers.

Taylor Instruments in Rochester had been in business for over half a century before the first airplane flew. But by 1914 they were already supplying Curtiss, Thomas, and others with altimeters and other instruments (often under the Tycos brand) needed for flight. Sometimes the instrument face bore the name of the buyer, such as Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.

By 1916 Ingersoll-Rand in Painted Post employed over 800 men and “several score” of women, and the shops were “running night and day, on war materials for the British and allied governments.” The Rand manufactured ammunition, or more precisely it made shells, with the powder and projectiles installed elsewhere. On a smaller scale Corning Glass Works supplied optical glass for the same governments. They bought Steuben Glass at this time, since the main company was unaccustomed to precision work.

Both the Rand and the Glass Works were patrolled by armed guards, with admission by pass. The Curtiss plant had a scare when a couple of former employees were arrested for espionage, but while details on output might have interested the Central Powers, by that stage Curtiss didn’t have any secrets worth pirating. Some employees were also charged with sabotage, for passing through unacceptable materials in order to make quotas.

No one was expecting war in early June of 1914, but it exploded two months later. By October the New York Times reported that the Curtiss plant was running ’round the clock, six days a week. By year’s end Ingersoll-Rand was filling two boxcars with shells every day. By January Thomas was relocated in Ithaca. By spring Curtiss broke ground for huge new factories in Buffalo. It was good money while it lasted, but tens of thousands would be unemployed without warning, when the Armistice was signed in 1918.

Keuka Lake Legends

Leave a reply

As the story goes…

A Seneca man watched helpless and horrified as a freak storm sprang up on Keuka Lake, capsizing a canoe and killing his enture family. Filled with anger he cursed the lake, saying that though it might take people’s lives, it would never take their bodies. And from that day to this, those who are lost always rise before long to the surface of Keuka.

So the old tale goes, anyway. All communities have myths and legends that have grown up over the years… some amusing, some inspiring, some a little frightening. On Keuka Lake, legends abound.

One is the story that Red Jacket, the Seneca leader and orator, was born on Keuka Lake. There was certainly a Keuka connection – Red Jacket’s mother lived in the Branchport area, at least in her later years, and he used to visit her there. Red Jacket Park in Penn Yan honors his memory.

I checked four sources, and found three birthplaces. We understand that Red Jacket said he’d been born on Keuka — but at other times, he said he’d been born in other places. He was a supreme politician, of course; perhaps at times he tailored his tale to fit his audience.

This leads to a similar legend that Henry Flagler was born, or at least lived, in Hammondsport. Flagler was the driving force behind the development of Florida – notably the Florida East Coast Railroad, Miami, and Miami Beach. Flagler’s father was a Presbyterian minister, and Hammondsport Presbyterian Church had a Flagler as minister in the mid-1800s. But it was a different Flagler, not Henry’s father.

Then there’s the tale of Viking fortifications. A line of large stones stretches along one section of Keuka Bluff. An old local story is that they’re ruins of a fort, built by exploring Vikings.

This always seemed a little unlikely to me. But just for fun, I asked regional historian J. Sheldon Fisher (then in his nineties, but still as busy as I was, half a century younger) for his opinion. Shel was never shy about interpretations that other people considered a stretch, but his take on the Viking ruins was swift and sure: “It looked to me like somebody rolled the big rocks down the slope to get rid of them.”

Jerusalem’s pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson supposedly once told her flock that she would demonstrate miraculous powers by walking on the water of Keuka Lake. At the appointed time and place she asked the gathered enthusiasts if they had faith that she could do as she proposed. When they shouted that they did, she said that since they had faith, they didn’t need proof, and went on home dry-shod.

So the story goes, anyhow. But other versions place the event on half a dozen other bodies of water, including Waneta Lake and Seneca Lake. So it’s probably a fairy tale told by unbelievers to poke fun at Jemima and her followers.

Another legend concerns the old Hammondsport Academy building, currently apartments. On the lower level along the Main Street side a set of built-in bleacher-like seats leads down toward a high-sided rectangular “well.” The legend is that this space was a swimming pool. The reality is that it was an awkwardly-placed gym and basketball court.

A set of linked stories claims that young Glenn Curtiss, overexcited on creating his first motorcycle, ran out of gas far from town and had to push the machine back (having forgotten fuel consumption), or that he had to stop by driving it into the lake (alternatively, a tree), having forgotten brakes.
These stories are told affectionately, but they royally annoyed Curtiss, who firmly, if not forcefully, denied them. Curtiss even as a child was famed for meticulous planning — they said he’d think for half an hour before doing fifteen minutes of work — so it seems pretty unlikely that he would be so spectacularly dense. But those stories are now on their second century of making their rounds, and they’ll probably continue to be told. It’s Keuka Lake, after all. Legends abound.

“On Time”

It doesn’t seem to mean as much as it once did, but it used to be that having your face on the cover of Time magazine was truly a sign of celebrity, notoriety, or significance.

*Time started publishing in 1923, and on October 13 of the following year readers and newsstand browsers may have been startled to find the diamond-drill eyes of Glenn Curtiss (“handy at fixing things”) boring into their souls. Glenn’s photo spotlighted an article (“At Dayton”) about a recent international air meet which he had NOT attended, but where “his name was on every man’s lips…. At least every other plane of those assembled bore a Curtiss motor. Not one plane but bore some evidence to the contributions he has made to mankind’s knowledge of the air and his agility in it.”

*Curtiss’s portrait was photographic, befitting a former Eastman employee who had sidelined as a professional photographer in his teens. But the April 5, 1926 cover featured a sketch of Corning’s Alanson B. Houghton, grandfather of “Amo” Houghton. Alanson of course had been president of the Glass Works and had represented the district in Congress, but the article (“Nought on Stumbles”) was more interested in his bleak take on European affairs – he was our ambassador to Great Britain, following three years as ambassador to Germany (our first since the declaration of war in 1917).

*A color painting of Navy Air Chief Towers (“not ships or planes, but planes plus ships”) adorned the cover of Time on June 23, 1941. Admiral John H. “Jack” Towers was not from Steuben County, but came here in 1911 to learn to fly and to test the navy’s first aircraft (a seaplane) on Keuka Lake. He was a pallbearer at Glenn’s funeral, and a warm supporter of Curtiss for the rest of his life. The article (“Sailors Aloft”) concerned debates over the independence and composition of the military air services. Ernest Hamlin Baker painted the cover.

*Corning’s Robert E. Woods, First Captain of Cadets at West Point (“duty, honor, country”) got a Hamlin painting on June 11, 1945. Besides his graduation and commissioning as the war drew toward its end, an article “The Long Gray Line” noted Woods as the only man to have played for both teams in the army-navy football game… first as an Annapolis midshipman, and later as a cadet at West Point. Woods’ class would be the last to graduate during the war, which ended on September 2.

*The October 10, 1994 cover (“Black Renaissance: African-American Artists Are Truly Free at Last”) returned to photography, this time in color and this time featuring the far more cheerful countenance of Wayland’s Bill T. Jones, representing the article “The Beauty of Black Art.” Noting that he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985, Time reflected that “today he works with the intensity of someone who knows his time is running out.” Twenty-five years after publication, we’re glad to report that Bill T. Jones is still going strong.

*It’s interesting to look at who did NOT make the cover of time. Neither Amo Houghton nor his father appeared, despite their long careers in industry, business, and public service. IBM president Thomas J. Watson Sr. never made it, though Tom Junior did.

*None of the “big three” birth control crusaders – Margaret Higgins Sanger, Edith Higgins Byrne, and Katherine Houghton Hepburn (all contemporaries from Corning) were on the cover. Nor were the Corning researchers who made dramatic breakthroughs in fiber optics. Neither was author and film critic Charles Champlin of Hammondsport. His contributions were INSIDE the magazine, over the course of 17 years as a correspondent for Time and Life.

Grab Bag — Steuben County in (and out of) the World

We’ve earlier reported on places named for Steuben County; naval vessels with Steuben County names; and Curtiss airplanes on U.S. postage stamps. But there’s a “grab bag” of other worldwide recognitions – stamps and otherwise — of Steuben County.
CURTISS IN THE WORLD
*Wow, are Curtiss airplanes popular on world stamps! Here’s a listing as I’ve been able to find them – and it’s no doubt short!
*The June Bug: San Marino. Curtiss Museum has a flying reproduction of this 1908 airplane.
*The Silver Dart: Canada (two stamp designs).
*Curtiss Jenny: Micronesia (with a portrait of Glenn), Vietnam, Anguilla (the inverted Jenny), Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Paraguay (inverted Jenny), Canada (the Canadian “Canuck” model), Bermuda (Jenny on floats), Liberia (two stamps). You can see an original Jenny at Curtiss Museum.
*Navy-Curtiss NC-4 (first aircraft to fly across the Atlantic): Hungary, Grenada, Portugal, Marshall Islands, Antigua-Barbuda.
* Model MF “Seagull” flying boat: Papua New Guinea There’s an original Seagull at Curtiss Museum.
*Model HS-2L flying boat: Canada.
*Hydroaeroplane (float plane): Cuba (three stamps, all featuring pioneer pilot Agustin Parla). Curtiss Museum has a flying reproduction.
*Curtiss Condor II airliner: Honduras.
*F8C Helldiver: Marshall Islands.
*The June Bug, the Silver Dart, most of the hydroaeroplanes, and some of the Jennys were made in Hammondsport. After Glenn’s death the Curtiss Buffalo plant made 14,000 P-40 “Warhawk” fighter planes (with components from Mercury Aircraft, in Hammondsport). The P-40 is an excitingly visual aircraft, bursting from stamps made for Cuba, Mozambique, Fiji, Liberia (three stamp designs), Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Marshall Islands (three stamp designs), New Zealand, Palau, Central African Republic, Norfolk Island, Congo, Tuvalu, Canada, Papua New Guinea, Somaliland, Taiwan. Curtiss Museum has two original P-40s.
*Two more World War II airplanes made the stamps: the SOC3 Seagull (Kiribati), and the SB2C Helldiver (Vanuatu, Marshall Islands), also with components from Mercury Aircraft.
*MORE STEUBEN STAMPS
*Curtiss is not the only Steuben figure who has helped to move the mails.
*A Micronesian stamp shows Thomas J. Watson of Campbell in the famous “Think” photograph. (Palau and the Marshall Islands each have stamps honoring Thomas J. Watson, Jr. but as far as we know he never lived in Steuben.)
*The first non-Curtiss stamp with a Steuben connection came in 1948, when the Mount Palomar Observatory opened. A 3-cent U.S. stamp shows the dome of the observatory, and a glimpse of the Hale Telescope with its 200-inch reflector made at Corning Glass Works.
*The Hale Telescope has also been commemorated in stamps from Ascension, Hungary, and Nicaragua.
*A 1999 four-stamp U.S. set of commemorative “Glassmaking in America” U.S. stamps had its first day of issue at Corning Museum of Glass. Each stamp displays a different type of glass, in each case with four representative objects.
*The objects on the Art Glass stamp and on the Free Glass stamp all came from Corning Museum of Glass. Jane Shadel Spillman guided the selection process, and Nicholas Williams handled photography.
*And one of the objects (on the Art Glass stamp) was made in Steuben County: a Steuben Glass Aurene vase, made by Frederick Carder about 1917.
*AT SEA
*A staggering accomplishment of American industry was the Liberty Ship – 2710 World War II cargo ships, all based on a single design, and all made within four years.
*With nearly 3000 units at sea, the Liberty Ships were voracious for names. Hull 547, S.S. Marcus Whitman, honored the explorer/doctor/missionary who practiced in the Wheeler/Prattsburgh area. Launched in 1942, it was torpedoed and sunk off Brazil that same year.
*Hull 2293, S.S. Alanson B. Houghton (launched 1944, scrapped 1972), honored the glassmaking industrialist from Corning. Hull 2574, S.S. Narcissa Prentiss (launched 1943, scrapped 1961) memorialized Marcus Whitman’s Prattsburgh-born wife and colleague.
*HEAVENS ABOVE
*Minor Planet 34419, “Corning,” honors the city where the 200-inch mirror for the Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar was crafted. And while there’s a crater “Sanger” on the planet Venus, we imagine that “Corning” is generally the most distant use of a Steuben name… and we imagine it’s likely to stay that way!

Curtiss Planes on Postage Stamps — Again, and Again, and Again!

The 2018 issue of two postage stamps marks the 14th and 15th times that Curtiss aircraft have appeared on U.S. stamps.

*The first appearance was exactly a hundred years before, when the first Airmail stamp portrayed a Curtiss Jenny, the type on which the first scheduled air mail was flown. (Early Curtiss Jennys were made in Hammondsport, but later models… such as those used for the mail… were made in Buffalo and elsewhere.)

*A few sheets of this 24-cent stamp erroneously depicted the Jenny upside down. The extremely rare “inverted Jenny” stamps command high prices from collectors!

*Stamps 2 and 3 came the same year and used the same design, with differences in color shade. These were 16-cent stamps and 6-cent stamps, issued as the cost of Airmail plummeted.

*The fourth stamp didn’t come until 1961, and marked the golden anniversary of naval aviation. It shows the Curtiss float plane that became US Navy aircraft A-1.

*Seven years later came the golden anniversary of Airmail, leading to a 10-cent air mail stamp that copied the same Jenny from the original 1918 issues.

*Then things were quiet until 1980, when a 35-cent Airmail stamp honored Glenn Curtiss, and a 28-cent Airmail stamp honored Blanche Stuart Scott, America’s first woman pilot. Each stamp shows an early Curtiss “pusher” of the type with the full front elevator gear… the type with which they each flew to glory. The Curtiss stamp had its first day of issue in Hammondsport post office, and as far as I can tell these two are the only U.S. Stamps showing Steuben residents.

*In 1985 came a 39-cent Airmail stamp honoring aviation pioneers Lawrence and Elmer Sperry. The stamp shows the Curtiss Model F flying boat on which Lawrence did many of his experiments and demonstrations to create the autopilot.

*A 1988 Airmail stamp honors pioneer aviation experimenter Samuel P. Langley. Langley had nothing to do with Steuben County, but the stamp shows his 1903 “aerodrome.” Curtiss rebuilt it long after Langley’s death; he and some colleagues flew it repeatedly from Keuka Lake in 1914… the only times the aircraft ever flew.

*A 1989 first class stamp (25 cents) honors the 20th Universal Postal Congress, and shows a Jenny with the original Airmail service.

*In 1997 a flying Jenny appeared on a 32-cent first class stamp, as part of a set on vintage aircraft.

*A two-dollar stamp in 2013 deliberately copied the erroneous “inverted Jenny.” After it was on the market the Postal Service announced that, for the enjoyment of collectors, they had slipped in a few sheets that deliberately inverted the inversion, making the Jenny fly correctly… in a set that deliberately shows it incorrectly! Anyway, that counts as two stamps, getting us up to numbers 12 and 13. This set honored not Airmail or airplanes, but stamp collecting! Since the original inverted Jenny is probably the most prized U.S. stamp, that makes sense.

*The 2018 issues show a Jenny head-on, in a sort of art-deco styling. They’re said to be the model JN-4H on which the first Airmail was flown, but the radiator shape suggests that the airplane is a Model D, rather than a Model H. These stamps say Airmail, but the U.S. doesn’t have designated Airmail stamps any more. The blue stamp honors Airmail pilots, while the red (but otherwise identical) stamp commemorates the centennial of those first schedued flights.

*Other than the Langley aircraft and the late-model Jennys, Curtiss made all the airplanes on these stamps in Hammondsport.

*There are DOZENS of foreign stamps with Curtiss airplanes, especially when you throw in the World War II models such as the P-40. If I ever get a reasonably comprehensive list together, I’ll share that.

*But we should mention two foreign stamps that picture Glenn Curtiss himself. A 1993 Micronesian issue has a very nice picture of “Glenn H. Curtiss Pioneer of Flight,” along with a Curtiss Jenny. And a 4-lire San Marino stamp “Glenn Curtiss 1908” shows Glenn (in tiny silhouette) in his “June Bug.” The stamp doesn’t show anything of the setting, but we know that Glenn is soaring over Pleasant Valley on the Fourth of July… a Steuben person, a Steuben-made aircraft, and even a Steuben event. Well done, Republic of San Marino!

Steuben County’s BIGGEST Fourth of July!

The Fourth of July in our region has seen some memorable moments. Slavery ended in New York on July 4, 1827. In 1863, news must have just started trickling in about Lee fleeing Gettysburg with his crushed army, and Grant marching into Vicksburg. What must that day have been like in 1946, with World War II victoriously ended, the boys back home, and America on top of the world! In 1972 people were still counting the dead and finding the living from the terrible flood twelve days earlier. But four years later, local folks joined Americans around the globe to celebrate their bicentennial, almost exciting as the CENTENNIAL Fourth in 1876. In Bath, in the late 19th century, EVERY Fourth meant a huge parade!
*As soon as this day dawned in 1908 people started converging on Pleasant Valley Wine Company. They came by bike and they came by buggy. They rode on horses and they rode in cars. They came on foot, or erupted from “special” trains of the B&H Railroad. The army had an observer there, and so did the German government. The movies were there, and so were the newspapers. The Aero Club was there, and “Scientific American” was there.
*Before you knew it, a thousand people were milling about the grounds, thrilled to have a chance denied to almost every human being living, or any who had ever lived. They were going to see a man fly.
*Hammondsport’s own Glenn Curtiss, who had just turned 30, was working with the awe-inspiring Alexander Graham Bell to create and perfect airplanes. Working with three younger partners (plus a lot of kibitzing from anyone who was interested), they had already designed, built, and flown “Red Wing” and “White Wing.” Now they had a new aircraft – “June Bug” – with Curtiss as pilot and chief designer. The new machine had a new feature – tricycle landing gear, still widely used today. It also sported ailerons, invented for “White Wing” and still in universal use.
*”June Bug” was so successful that Curtiss was going to fly for the “Scientific American” trophy. This would require an officially-observed unassisted takeoff, a one-kilometer flight without any stops or touchdowns, and a safe landing. He’d picked the Fourth of July to be sure of getting a crowd, and now the crowd was ready and eager. “June Bug” was ready, and the officials were ready. But Glenn Curtiss wasn’t there.
*For all his well-deserved reputation as a daredevil, Curtiss paradoxically was a bear for safety. There were thunderstorms in the area. Air conditions weren’t good, and when conditions weren’t good, Curtiss didn’t fly.
*No official time had been set for the trial, but around noon the crowd started getting ugly. They had all come out to watch a flying machine. Examined closely, how likely did that seem? Were they all the victims of some gigantic hoax?
*The winery invited everybody in for an impromptu tasting and a cold collation. They all decided they could wait a little longer.
*By late afternoon things had improved, and Curtiss motored out to the winery. After conferring with officials he took his seat, revved up the engine, rumbled down the trotting horse track, and took off as his wife screamed.
*Generations of amused male chauvinists have made much of this scream, utterly overlooking the fact that Lena was right – she had instantly spotted the problem, and recognized its dangers. “June Bug” was shooting up higher than they had ever flown before, at an angle steeper than they had ever tried before. Curtiss was standing up in the airframe, leaning on the wheel, trying to get the nose down low enough to regain control.
*He managed, and soon discovered that the tail had been assembled at the wrong angle, forcing the nose upward. After disassembly and reassembly they wheeled back to the start line, ready to try again. As Curtiss looked down the course he saw a photographer setting up just short of the one-kilometer mark.
*He’d been having a bad day, and he later wrote to Bell that something snapped in him at that moment. This unspeakable shutterbug was all prepared to snap a picture of Curtiss just FAILING to reach his goal. So, he told Dr. Bell, just to spite the man he flew down the course, over the photographer, over the mark… and kept going… into the sunset of the Fourth of July… as a thousand voices cheered.
*He made just about a mile before landing to shut down his engine to prevent overheating. Back at the winery workers grabbed bottles off the shelves and rushed outside. The movie crew soon found that it had fine film – the first ever made of an airplane flying in America. An even bigger crowd turned out for more flights on the fifth, and Glenn Curtiss was launched on a spectacular career in aviation. What could top that, for a Fourth of July?
*(Lightly edited from an earlier column)

Our World — A Hundred Years Ago

Leave a reply

Germany rolled the dice in 1917, accepting war with America by an aggressive unrestricted u-boat campaign that sank anything approaching the British Isles in hopes of starving Britain before America could get organized to fight. When the Germans also used American facilities to send a coded message to Mexico urging war against the U.S., the roof caved in. America was in the Great War.

We’d had three years to get ready, and hadn’t done much of anything. A “Home Guard” quickly formed to protect Corning from attack, and almost as quickly faded away. (The county paid for their shoes and uniforms.) A draft was soon in effect. The Curtiss plant in Hammondsport worked around the clock; when people came over the hill from Bath, they could hear the aircraft engines roaring in their test stands near the Glen.

Thousands of prospective pilots started training on Curtiss Jennys, mostly made in Buffalo. Willys-Morrow in Elmira became a Curtiss subcontractor (making engines), and did Fay & Bowen in Geneva (making seaplane hulls). Katherine Stinson, flying a custom-made Curtiss biplane, set the American distance record at 606 miles. Corning Glass Works produced tons of laboratory glass, formerly made almost exclusively in Germany.

America bought the Danish Virgin Islands, and made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens. An early spring revolution in Russia toppled the Czar, while an early winter revolution brought Lenin’s communists to power. Three children reported visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. Exhausted French soldiers began a series of mutinies. Lawrence of Arabia captured Aqaba. The first Pulitzer Prizes were announced. Lions Club was formed. Race riots in East Saint Louis killed perhaps a hundred or more people.

Mata Hari was executed. Arthur Balfour declared that the British “look with favor” on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The U.S. made brutal attacks on people suspected of not fully supporting the war. Germania Winery near Hammondsport changed its name to Jermania. On November 14, prison guards attacked and tortured 33 suffragettes in Virginia. Clemenceau, “the Tiger of France,” became his country’s premiere and announced his policy: “I make war.”

The National Hockey League was formed. Allenby took Jerusalem. In Halifax, the biggest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb killed 2000 people.

New York voters finally approved a constitutional amendment providing for women’s suffrage (Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates Counties each voted against.) New York women started voting two years ahead of the national amendment.

Folks in Wheeler and in Mossy Glen (South Corning) formed Granges for themselves — the Wheeler Grange is still in operation.

Buffalo Bill died, along with Admiral Dewey and Count von Zeppelin. So did Scott Joplin, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, and Mother Cabrini.

Births for 1917 included Zsa Zsa Gabor, Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Cyrus Vance, Hans Conried, Ella Fitzgerald, Raymond Burr, Dean Martin, Lena Horne, Andrew Wyeth, Phyllis Diller, Robert Mitchum, Jack Kirby, John F. Kennedy, and Man o’ War.

By the way, 1917 marks the last year that the western world stumbled along with two calendars. The Bolsheviks, eager to modernize Russia, quickly ditched the obsolete Julian calendar and joined the rest of the west in Gregorian dates.

Steuben Folks Make the (Educational) Comics

Leave a reply

A number of Steuben County folks have made enough of a splash in the world that they have become the subjects of biographies, documentaries, and histories. Using the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), I recently did some exploration to see how Steuben County has fared in “educational” (or even entertainment) comic books.

*Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport, perhaps our closest approach to a superhero, appears in eight publications, beginning with a caricature in a 1909 aeronautical publication. (Tom Baldwin, who at the time was living and working in Hammondsport, also appears.)

*The other Curtiss appearances are all non-fiction pieces on the history of flight — two of them in Norwegian!

*The next most-frequent is Marcus Whitman, who shows up in five comics, PLUS cover appearances (as small insets) in Real Life Comics (1945) and True Comics (1946). Two of his appearances are in Norwegian, and there is probably also at least one Dutch reprint.

*Other Prattsburgh-area folks, such as Narcissa Prentiss and Henry Spalding, also come into the Whitman stories. But Henry appears on his own in a 1958 story about Chief Joseph.

*Corning-born Margaret Sanger has two current book-length graphic biographies: Woman Rebel, published in Canada, and Our Lady of Birth Control. Sanger ally Katherine Houghton Hepburn, also of Corning, appears in a photo in the notes to Woman Rebel.

*Corning Glass Works appears, though not by name, in a 1961 story about making the 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar observatory. And numerous Steuben men appear in caricature in a 1907 private publication by the Steuben County Society of New York City.

*In a class by himself is Dick Ayers, who passed away two years ago shortly after his 90th birthday. Dick lived in Pulteney for a couple of years during the Great Depression — Hammondsport teacher Stan Smith got him his first paying art commission. A mid-March check of the Grand Comics Database showed that Dick, who worked in comic books for about 70 years, penciled 3349 stories; inked 5274 stories; lettered 832 stories; wrote 76 stories; colored 1 story; and appeared as a character in 22 comic-book stories — even beating Glenn Curtiss! Considering how long he worked in the field, no doubt there are many more stories yet to be discovered.

The Fourth of July — Glenn Curtiss Style

Leave a reply

The Fourth of July in our region has seen some memorable moments. Slavery ended in New York on July 4, 1827. In 1863, news must have just started trickling in about Lee fleeing Gettysburg with his crushed army, and Grant marching into Vicksburg. What must that day have been like in 1946, with World War II victoriously ended, the boys back home, and America on top of the world! In 1972 people were still counting the dead and finding the living from the flood twelve days earlier.

*As soon as this day dawned in 1908 people started converging on Pleasant Valley Wine Company. They came by bike and they came by buggy. They rode on horses and they rode in cars. They came on foot, or erupted from “special” trains of the B&H Railroad. The army had an observer there, and so did the German government. The movies were there, and so were the newspapers. The Aero Club was there, and “Scientific American” was there.

*Before you knew it, a thousand people were milling about the grounds, thrilled to have a chance denied to almost every human being living, or any who had ever lived. They were going to see a man fly.

*Hammondsport’s own Glenn Curtiss, who had just turned 30, was working with the awe-inspiring Alexander Graham Bell to create and perfect airplanes. Working with three younger partners (plus a lot of kibitzing from anyone who was interested), they had already designed, built, and flown “Red Wing” and “White Wing.” Now they had a new aircraft – “June Bug” – with Curtiss as pilot and chief designer. The new machine had a new feature – tricycle landing gear, still widely used today. It also sported ailerons, invented for “White Wing” and still in universal use.

*”June Bug” was so successful that Curtiss was going to fly for the “Scientific American” trophy. This would require an officially-observed unassisted takeoff, a one-kilometer flight without any stops or touchdowns, and a safe landing. He’d picked the Fourth of July to be sure of getting a crowd, and now the crowd was ready and eager. “June Bug” was ready, and the officials were ready. But Glenn Curtiss wasn’t there.

*For all his well-deserved reputation as a daredevil, Curtiss paradoxically was a bear for safety. There were thunderstorms in the area. Air conditions weren’t good, and when conditions weren’t good, Curtiss didn’t fly.

*No official time had been set for the trial, but around noon the crowd started getting ugly. They had all come out to watch a flying machine. Examined closely, how likely did that seem? Were they all the victims of some gigantic hoax?

*The winery invited everybody in for an impromptu tasting and a cold collation. They all decided they could wait a little longer.

*By late afternoon things had improved, and Curtiss motored out to the winery. After conferring with officials he took his seat, revved up the engine, rumbled down the trotting horse track, and took off as his wife screamed.

*Generations of amused male chauvinists have made much of this scream, utterly overlooking the fact that Lena was right – she had instantly spotted the problem, and recognized its dangers. “June Bug” was shooting up higher than they had ever flown before, at an angle steeper than they had ever tried before. Curtiss was standing up in the airframe, leaning on the wheel, trying to get the nose down low enough to regain control.

*He managed, and soon discovered that the tail had been assembled at the wrong angle, forcing the nose upward. After disassembly and reassembly they wheeled back to the start line, ready to try again. As Curtiss looked down the course he saw a photographer setting up just short of the one-kilometer mark.

*He’d been having a bad day, and he later wrote to Bell that something snapped in him at that moment. This unspeakable shutterbug was all prepared to snap a picture of Curtiss just FAILING to reach his goal. So, he told Dr. Bell, just to spite the man he flew down the course, over the photographer, over the mark… and kept going… into the sunset of the Fourth of July… as a thousand voices cheered.

*He made just about a mile before landing to shut down his engine to prevent overheating. Back at the winery workers grabbed bottles off the shelves and rushed outside. The movie crew soon found that it had fine film – the first ever made of an airplane flying in America. An even bigger crowd turned out for more flights on the fifth, and Glenn Curtiss was launched on a spectacular career in aviation.

*He won that trophy again in 1909, and again in 1910, after which they retired it to him. You can see if just off the main entrance at the National Air and Space Museum, engraved with the name of Glenn Curtiss.