Back to School

Hi everyone. Yes I go back to school today but that's not why I titled this post as I did.

Here's why.

The latest challenge at Tag Tuesday is Back to School.  I thought the colorful leaves reminded me of fall, which is when school used to start around here. And I had this fun  paper tape, as well as the A is for apple little minnie banner piece.

So since its my back to school day, how about a little history lesson?. Have your ever heard of Glenn Curtiss?

When we went to the Finger Lakes a couple of weeks ago we visited the Glenn Curtiss museum. It was my husband's pick, since he knew about Glenn Curtiss. I learned a lot about this man at the museum.

So Glenn Curtiss was an inventor back in the very early 1900's. In fact, he ran a motorcycle shop in Hammondsport, NY and he actually set a world speed record that lasted until 1930 on one of his bikes.

What I found interesting is how motorcycles changed my motorized bicycles to later on something that looks more like a motorcycle. The museum had a collection of his motorcycles.

But even more interesting was Glenn Curtiss's aviation story. After the Wright Brothers made the first flight, Curtiss was building planes and actually flew on a frozen Lake Keuka, which is the second Finger Lake we visited. 

However, he was then sued by the Wright Brothers because they had a general patent on airplane design and they claimed he stole their design. However, he then worked with Alexander Graham Bell (the telephone inventor) to make a moveable tail piece. It gave better flight control, and in many people's mind, made his plane design different from the Wright Brothers. Curtiss even won a Scientific American award for flight, and won a challenge to be the first to fly from Albany, NY to New York City.  He started Curtiss Aviation and built lots of planes.  Eventually his company joined with the Wright Brother's aviation and they formed Curtiss-Wright Aviation.

The Wright Brothers are names that went down in all the general history books though. Not Glenn Curtiss. Here's a few examples of his planes.

 The Curtiss Jenny.  Several countries used this plane as a training plane during the Second World War.

 He was also the first to develop planes that could land and take off on water.

And he designed planes to lands on naval ships too.

(As well as he was the first person to design travel trailers to be pulled behind cars too.)

The museum had some other interesting antiques too. But those will need to wait for another day.

Thanks for visiting me today.