Pit Stop in Poughkeepsie: Glenn Curtiss and His “Hudson Flyer”
Pit Stop in Poughkeepsie: Glenn Curtiss and His “Hudson Flyer” In today’s modern world, most of us have been in an airplane. Some people enjoy the thrill of a 747 taking off take-off down a runway and lifting steadily into the air, while others prefer to keep their feet squarely on the ground. The idea that something could weigh over 400,000 pounds and fly as high as 36,000 feet at a cruising speed of 500 mph would probably boggle the minds of early aviators. For Glenn Curtiss, the man who broke barriers and records in the new world of fast-moving machines, his flights may have been a little lower and a little slower, but they still boggled the minds of his contemporaries. Glenn Curtiss was no stranger to speed. He raced bicycles in the 1890s, and after the turn of the century, he moved into the world of internal combustion engines. Curtiss set a land speed record in 1903 on his hand-built motorcycle, reaching a top speed of 64 miles per hour. He did it again in 1907 with a motorcycle that contained an eight-cylinder motor of his design; on smooth sand in Ormond Beach Florida, [...]