Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company forms.

 

Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, the first dedicated airplane manufacturing company, was formed by Glenn Hammond Curtiss and Augustus Moore Herring in Hammondsport, New York.  In 1929 it would merge with the Wright Aeronautical to form Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which still exists.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, November 2, 1923. Air Speed Record

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, November 2, 1923. A person of interest.:

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Harlold J. Brow set a new flight airspeed record of 250 mph, making him the first person to fly faster than 400 kph.  His plane was a Curtis racer.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, August 8, 1922. An eventful Tuesday.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, August 8, 1922. An eventful Tuesday.: 

Tuesday, August 8, 1922. An eventful Tuesday.

Here's more on the story involved in the photograph appearing above.

1922 - Into the Grand Canyon and Out Again by Airplane

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, January 18, 1922. Torpedo bomber

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, January 18, 1922. Torpedo bomber: 

Wednesday, January 18, 1922. Torpedo bomber

 Curtis CT, Navy bomber, January 18, 1922.  Only one was built.

First "Crop Dusting". August 3, 1921.

On this day in 1921, crop dusting, spraying pesticides by air, was performed for the first time in an experiment involving the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

First crop dusting being conducted.

The first flight featured Army Air Corps pilot John A. Macready and aircraft engineer Etienne Dormoy who performed the test with a Curtiss JN4 over a field outside of Troy, Ohio.  Lead arsenate was sprayed to attack caterpillars.

Dormay left, Macready right.

Macready would complete an Army career prior to World War Two, leaving the service in 1926, but was recalled to serve in the Second World War.  He retired from the Army Air Force in 1948.  He was a legendary pilot at the time and had many firsts while in the service, including being the first Air Corps pilot to parachute from a stricken aircraft at night.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday August 1, 1921. Looking at the 300th Anniv...

Lex Anteinternet: Monday August 1, 1921. Looking at the 300th Anniv...: On this day in 1921, President Harding addressed a crowd at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding...

May 28, 1921. An early disaster.

Showing both the rapid advance of air travel, as more people were able to fly, and in more comfort, than before, and that aircraft remained very much an unknown in some ways, the deadliest air accident up to that time occurred when a Curtiss Eagle of the U.S. Army's Air Service crashed in a severe thunderstorm at Morgantown, Maryland.

Curtis Eagle.

All seven occupants were killed.  The plane was serving as an air ambulance.

March 29, 1921. Standing by the biplane.

A photograph taken on this day in 1921.  I believe the airplane is a Curtis Jenny.

 

Some Gave All: Maud Toomey Memorial, Evansville Wyoming

Some Gave All: Maud Toomey Memorial, Evansville Wyoming:

Maud Toomey Memorial, Evansville Wyoming

Maude Toomey was a 33 year old high school Latin teacher, and an oil company bookkeeper, in Casper when she took a ride as a passenger in a plane owned and piloted by Casperite Bert Cole on January 14, 1920.  Something went tragically wrong during the flight and Cole's plane crashed near what is now the Evansville water treatment plant, which is not far from what was Natrona County's first airport.

A cement cross was placed in the ground at the spot where the plant crashed.  Oddly, no inscription was placed on it, leading to a small element of doubt about its purpose later on when it was rediscovered during the construction of the water treatment plant.  Since that time, an inscription has been placed at its base and the location is now an Evansville park.

Evansville has sort of a unique history in that regard as two of its somber memorials are located in areas where children now play, which is perhaps a more appropriate placement than many might suppose, honoring the dead in a way that they might have appreciated.

These photographs were taken near the centennial of the accident, which contributed to very long shadows, even though they were taken near 1:00 p.m.

Lex Anteinternet: January 14, 1920. Untimely passings.

Lex Anteinternet: January 14, 1920. Untimely passings.:

January 14, 1920. Untimely passings.

January 14

1920  The first fatal air accident to occur near Casper occurred, taking the life of pilot Bert Cole and passenger Maud Toomey.   Ms. Toomey is also the first female air fatality in Wyoming.  The very early airport in use at this time was located where the town of Evansville now sits, and a memorial to Ms. Toomey, who was a schoolteacher, is located in Evansville.  Attribution. Wyoming State Historical Society.

On this day, Natrona County suffered its first air fatality.

The location of this tragic accident is in Evansville, Wyoming, where the county's first air field was located.  There's a cross marking the location somewhere in Evansville, but I've never been able to find it.

Lex Anteinternet: January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unite? Suffrage Advances (Posted due to the Curtiss Aircraft Company reference).

Lex Anteinternet: January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unit...:

This item is posted from one of our companion blogs due to the newspaper reference regarding the Curtiss Aircraft Company.  If anyone has more details, I'd be curious on them.

January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unite? Suffrage Advances.

The headline news for this day, January 6, 1920, was that a treaty was to be signed between the victorious Allies and the Germans.  Or, more properly, a protocol to the Versailles Treaty

More properly, this was an amendment to the Versailles Treaty altering and amending some of its terms.  Germany's reluctance to enter into a protocol had lead the Allies and Germany back to the brink of war several months earlier, an event now wholly forgotten, but in the end the amendment had been worked out.

The U.S. Senate had not ratified the original text and would still not be ratifying the treaty in its entirety.

The Casper paper was also reporting that a new Wyoming corporation had been formed to build or take over the manufacturing of the Curtis Aircraft line.  I've never heard of this before and Wikipedia sheds no light on what was going on with this story.  Does anyone know the details?

Also making headlines was an effort to unite the nation's Protestant churches into a single organization. The headlines are apparently a bit misleading as they would suggest that the individual denominations were set to be united, which was not the proposal.

Also misleading, today, is the use of the term "United Church of Christ". That denomination would not come about until 1957.

On the same day, Kentucky and Rhode Island passed the 19th Amendment.

Suffrage supporters watching the Governor of Kentucky sign his state's passage of the 19th Amendment.

And Walt experienced something that I routinely do a century later.

Curtiss JN-4D, Denver International Airport

I have passed underneath this Curtis Jenny hundreds of times, but I never fail to take note of it.  Surprisingly, for one reason or another, I apparently never took a photograph of it until just the other day, even though I have photographed another biplane that's hanging from the ceiling at the Denver International Airport.

Jennies were surprisingly large, as this photo demonstrated.  Obsolescent at the time of hteir introduction, they none the less formed the backbone of the early American military airborne fleet and saw service in the Border War, as it came to be known to the Army, which of course wasn't a full war but threatened to become one. 

After World War One JN-4s were sold off and they became a common barn stormer aircraft.  There are a surprisingly large number of them left around today, a few of which still fly on rare occasion.