词条 | Curtiss, Glenn Hammond |
释义 | Curtiss, Glenn Hammond American engineer born May 21, 1878, Hammondsport, N.Y., U.S. died July 23, 1930, Buffalo pioneer aviator and leading American manufacturer of aircraft by the time of the United States's entry into World War I. Curtiss began his career in the bicycle business, earning fame as one of the leading cycle racers in western New York state. Fascinated by speed, he began to build lightweight internal-combustion engines (internal-combustion engine) for motorcycles (motorcycle). He became the fastest man on Earth on Jan. 23, 1907, when he attained a speed of 136.3 miles (219.4 km) per hour aboard one of his motorcycles at Ormond Beach, Fla. Curtiss entered aeronautics in 1904 when the American aeronaut Thomas Scott Baldwin purchased a Curtiss motorcycle engine to power his airship California Arrow. At the invitation of Alexander Graham Bell (Bell, Alexander Graham), he joined the newly formed Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) in 1907. Flying the AEA June Bug at Hammondsport, N.Y., on July 4, 1908, Curtiss won the Scientific American Trophy for the first public flight of at least 1 km (0.6 mile) with an American airplane. Curtiss was the target of a much-publicized patent suit brought by the Wright brothers (Wright, Wilbur and Orville) prior to World War I. The issue was ultimately resolved by the U.S. government, and it had little impact on the growth and prosperity of the Curtiss Company. ![]() Beginning in 1917, Curtiss was gradually eased out of corporate leadership in favour of management more attuned to mass-production practices common in the automobile industry and eventually shuffled off to run an experimental engineering operation. It was a traumatic experience for him, and in the fall of 1920 Curtiss sold an undisclosed, but considerable, portion of his stock. He then invested heavily in land in Florida and turned his attention to the design of house trailers. |
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