Unlocking The Sky : Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane

Unlocking the Sky tells the extraordinary tale of the race to design, refine, and manufacture a manned flying machine, a race that took place in the air, on the ground, and in the courtrooms of America. While the Wright brothers threw a veil of secrecy over their flying machine, Glenn Hammond Curtiss -- perhaps the greatest aviator and aeronautical inventor of all time -- freely exchanged information with engineers in America and abroad, resulting in his famous airplane, the June Bug, which made the first ever public flight in America. Fiercely jealous, the Wright brothers took to the courts to keep Curtiss and his airplane out of the sky and off the market. Ultimately, however, it was Curtiss's innovations and designs, not the Wright brothers', that served as the model for the modern airplane. Cover Image 1 Title Page 3 Dedication Page 4 Epigraph Page 5 Contents 7 Prologue: Langley’s Folly 9 Part One: Rewriting Aviation History 31 Chapter One: Intrigue at Hammondsport 33 Chapter Two: Wrights and Wrongs 49 Chapter Three: America or Bust 68 Part Two: Reaching for the Sky 87 Chapter Four: Captains of the Air 89 Chapter Five: Sky Dancing 111 Chapter Six: Flight of the June Bug 130 Chapter Seven: Sky King 152 Part Three: Warped Wings 175 Chapter Eight: Grounded 177 Chapter Nine: Flight of a Hero 194 Chapter Ten: New Beginnings 213 Epilogue: All but the Legacy 231 Appendix: A Partial List of Inventions by Glenn Curtiss 239 Sources 243 Acknowledgments 253 Index 255 About the Author 267 Books by Seth Shulman 268 Credits 269 Copyright Notice 270 About the Publisher 271 By midafternoon on December 8, 1903, dozens of spectators have gathered on the sunny banks of the Potomac River south of Washington D.C. They have come to glimpse the future.