Glenn Curtiss had an early interest in bicycles, and opened a bicycle shop in Hammondsport, New York. Not content to sell bicycles, he was soon building his own products, and designing new models. When small, one cylinder motors were put on bicycles, he left the world of bycicles and entered the world of engines and motorcycles. He designed his own lightweight engines, and the motorcycles they powered. In 1907 Curtiss drove a motorcycle with an air cooled V-8 engine to a speed of 136 miles an hour. The engine delivered 40 hp, and weighed 275 pounds. According to a Scientific American article of the day, the motorcycle experienced a broken universal joint at 90 mph, which buckled the frame. The record made him the fastest human on a motorcycle or car, until a car beat that speed 11 years later. A motorcycle would not beat that speed until 1930. Curtiss' speed was actually slower than an earlier Stanley Steamer that achieved 140- 150 mph, but that run was not an officially timed event. Looking at the picture below, I'm not sure I'd want to go 136 mph on bicycle wheels.
Cutriss was drawn into the field of avaition because of his lightweight yet powerful motors, and competed with the Wright brothers as pioneer avaiator and airplane designer. He designed the first float plane, aelerons, and many other new features in airplanes. Curtiss airplanes served in WWI, and Curtiss' company became Curtiss Wright when it merged with the successors of the Wright Brothers.
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Glenn Curtiss's mile record at Ormond Beach in 1907 was also an unofficial trial, and Curtiss himself realized that it didn't count. It was run late in the day on Jan. 24, 1907, sometime after dusk when the official timing apparatus was disconnected, in front of very few witnesses. There were a few experienced timers with stopwatches at the starting line, watching a solitary flagman at the finish line through binoculars. It is not known if the flagman at the finish was experienced or a volunteer. If the flagman was not properly lined up with the mile marker, or dropped the flag prematurely, or was not clearly visible in the twilight, any one of those factors could have skewed Curtiss's time recorded back at the start. The subsequent breakdown of Curtiss's V-8 motorcycle and Marriott's disastrous crash the next day have to go down as two of the most star-crossed 'what-if-only's' in racing history, as they both were on the verge of setting speed records that would have stood for a decade or more.
Posted by: James Merrick | March 03, 2006 at 01:42 PM