Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Best part of this book is the insight into Prof. Langley's preparation of the Aerodrome & it's failure to fly. this for those uninitiated with Samuel Langley. Also good the Curtiss flight from Albany to NYC in May 1910. But reader Beware!

STICKLING FOR ACCURACY

p.46 Shulman writes Katharine Wright being Orville's older sister.
-Orville was older than Katharine by 3 years. They both had the same birthday August 19.

p.97 Shulman makes claim that a wing's 'camber' & the effect of 'pitch' are one in the same.
-They are not. They are two totally different things.

p.100 The text here says Curtiss & both Wright Bros. didn't school past 8th grade.
-Not True! Both Wrights graduated High School.

p.102 It's noted here that the Dirigible enjoyed a brief era at the turn or the Century, early 1900s.
-Dirigibles were popular, especially the Zeppelins, up to the late 1930s.

p.106 Shulman correctly states the Wrights sent the crankshaft & flywheel from their 1903 Flyer's engine to the Aero Club of America for a 1906 exhibition.
-He doesn't mention that the Aero Club never sent the crankshaft & flywheel back to the Wrights & they remain lost!

p.110 Thomas Selfridge is stated to be a US Army Aviation Expert in 1907.
-Selfridge, in 1907, was a 1903 graduate of West Point, had never flown any aerial vehicle(until 1908) and perhaps not an 'expert' in aviation since there was basically no aviation to be expert in...(fixed wing flight was just being born). However Douglas MacArthur was A West Point classmate of Selfridge's.

p.134 The credit at the bottom of this page detailing how the AEA learned of aileron usage.
-Gibbs-Smith also stated(elsewhere)that info. about the Wrights' glider activities had been divulged by Octave Chanute himself perhaps to his good friend Dr Bell & certainly to the European aviation community from 1903 onwards. (Chanute had been a visitor to Kitty Hawk in 1901 & 1902).

p.160 The text says the Wrights wing warping & rudder method worked only when inter-connected.
-Not True! The Wrights successfully separated wing warping & rudder control in 1905.

p.161 the author makes a stupid analogy comparing the turbulence Curtiss's Rheims Flyer was encountering to an automoble hitting a boulder.
-If one hits a boulder at high speed in an auto one would be very dead. You don't repeatedly hit a boulder with a car at high speed & stay alive.

pgs.
174-176 These three pages about comparison to an early automobile patent.
-The author is mixing apples & oranges. This has nothing to do with the Wrights' 'FLYING MACHINE' patent.

pg.176 Henry Ford ....Big Deal!
-In 1909 Ford was just another up & coming auto maker. One of many. The Model T was only a year old & not mass produced until 1913.

p.177 Wing Warping & Rudder connections
-The Wrights' patent is explicit about the coordinated effect of rudder & wing warping. No matter the controls are connected or not.

p.189 Text mentions an 'airtight metal pontoon'
-Pontoons should always be 'watertight' one would think.

p.191 author states no airplane of the time(May 1910)could carry enough fuel to cover the 150 miles nonstop from Albany to NYC.
-Henri Farman in 1909 kept his prototype Farman III in the air for 113 miles circling a flying field in France. With bigger gas tanks this mileage could be increased.

p.192 A Dr Taylor responding to Curtiss's request for a landing spot at his Insane Asylum Grounds.

-This bit is funny & amusing. You'll have to read it.

This is a fantastic book about a little-known inventor and entrepreneur who helped change the world. It has excitement, wonderful, colorful tales of adventure, plus I learned a whole new side of the origin of the airplane. The author did a very nice job of evoking the period: a lot of amazing people like Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford swirl through this tale focusing on aviation great Glenn Curtiss. I would highly recommend this book even if you're not an aviation buff. I don't know what some of the other picky reviewers are quibbling about. I just really enjoyed this story and the way it was written. There's also a great review that first drew my attention to it in the Boston Globe.

This is a fun, exciting and entertaining book--one of the best nonfiction stories I've read. Glenn Curtiss had an amazing life and overcame an astounding set of obstacles to make a major contribution to the modern airplane. Best of all, Shulman is able to bring the story alive--deepening and broadening our understanding of how the airplane came to be and how technologies evolve. You don't have to be an aviation buff or even a history lover to thoroughly enjoy this page-turning tale. I highly recommend it.

Seth Shulman deserves some credit for attempting to get overdue credit for Glen Curtiss's improvements to early forms of heavier-than-air invention. He is at the same time stingy in giving credit to Alexander Graham Bell's AEA organization, which provided immeasurable assitance to Curtiss. While the book is in places a good read, Shulman seems to have difficulty in judiciously using details, with the effect being his losing sight of the forest for the trees. In addition, when Shulman goes into "attack mode" (which he does in several of his books) he can be extraordinarily unfair to his subjects' rivals. Shulman is not as guilty in this book of the kind of misdirection, omission, and irresponsibility that he displayed in The Telephone Gambit, his attack on Bell, but readers should be very skeptical anytime that Shulman compares Curtiss and the Wright Brothers.

I enjoyed reading about the efforts of Curtiss and colleagues. He was obviously an amazing inventor and did a great deal for the future of aviation. The constant bashing of the Wright Brothers was very tiresome and actually detracted from what was interesting reading about Curtiss. It took Shulman 90% of the book to give the Wright Brothers credit for what they had accomplished. Prior to that, I was waiting for Shulman to suggest that the Wright Brothers were not even present at Kitty Hawk.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The first reviewer might be correct in saying that the author could have provided more details on the many innovations Curtiss made to flying machines, but I never thought about it until I read his review. The book is really enjoyable as it is. I agree that you don't have to be an airplane buff to enjoy this. It is just a good read. I had no idea prior to reading this book that advancement in manned flight progressed so quickly at the beginning of the century. I don't believe that type of progress has been seen since. I'd recommend this book to anyone.

This version of the 'history' of the battle between the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss can be summarized as follows:

The Wright Brothers... (boo, hiss...) were mean and spiteful, but OUR HERO Glenn Curtiss was intelligent and kind... (yay, hurray!)

Yes, the tone and writing style are nearly that simplistic and one-sided.

The author shows a surprising lack of understanding of patent law, and makes a mess of the whole affair. He attacks the Wrights for doing what any patent holder normally does -- defend the patent. He implies that the patent would have somehow been invalid since Curtiss and others would soon have discovered the same knowledge anyway. And he argues that if the matter were decided by public opinion, then Curtiss would have won. All of which are irrelevant. The Wrights were first; they demonstrated a powered flying machine that a man could fly; they documented their discovery, built a machine that worked and described the methods for its use; and, they filed a patent with broad enough claims to protect their ideas from copycats like Curtiss.

The author praises Curtiss for patenting over 500 inventions but never prosecuting anyone over patent infringement. Which begs the question, why even bother filing a patent? It would have been cheaper and more 'altruistic' to publish his ideas in magazines and place them in the public domain.

The author states that none of the Wrights' ideas are still in use. The author should have known that the common air-screw propeller, the wind tunnel, the yaw-pitch-roll control method of flying and the basic plan-form of the airplane were all Wright ideas and inventions and remain as key elements of aeronautics a century after the Wrights first flew.

Reading this book was a bizarre experience. On page 50, Shulman describes the Wrights' first flight and implies that the inventors were so secretive that they did all they could to keep the news from public release. However, the well-known telegram that Orville wrote to his father on the day of the flight ends with the words: "inform press home Christmas." The author's omission of this detail is unfair to the Wrights and undercuts his own credibility.

The author complains that it was a long time before the Wrights made any flight in public. But why is that relevant to who "invented" the airplane? A lot of things are invented privately, and announced or demonstrated to the public only after a patent is obtained: modern pharmaceuticals, for example. An artifact is invented when it's invented, not when it's presented to the public.

The author chides the Wrights for not having invented the aileron, a hinged control surface that he claims is one of Curtiss's "inventions." But on page 134 the author claims that ailerons were actually invented, and even patented, in 1868 by a British inventor named Boulton. How then is it accurate to list the aileron as Curtiss's "invention"?

The author describes ailerons repeatedly as "wing flaps," which they are not. "Wing flaps" is a distinct term that applies to a distinct set of control surfaces that perform an entirely different function.

The author argues that ailerons control lateral stability. This is true, but their more important function lies in turning the aircraft, a subject that Shulman demonstrates no good understanding of.

These omissions, errors, and misunderstandings undercut the authority of a book that purports to give a revisionist view of the early history of powered flight.

I was actually reading this book while visiting Kitty Hawk, NC. I'm amazed how bitter and close minded people still are.

The Wright Brothers did some amazing things. After they solved the basic problems they then went and hid for a few years to lock up patents and hold a monopoly on air travel. The French are passionate about their version of who invented flight. I think a lot of people were solving the same problem once light gas engines were put into the equation. I personally think the Wright brothers had a very clever control system but the wing warping and how it was tied into the rudder was pretty dangerous. Glen Curtis put wheels and pontoons on an airplane. He also flew the first flight AND won at the Rheim fly in beat three other Wright flyers which came in last. The fight over aviation reminds me some of the fight with computers. Thankfully in aviation no one owned a monopoly so traveling by plane is safer than any other mode of transportation statistically. Hopefully my computer will not crash on me before I finish this review. :-)

Mr. Shulman's revisionist history presents Glenn Hammond Curtiss, early aviation pioneer and inventor, as a series of opposites. He alternately describes the man as shy, sheepish, and unassuming, and then as a master public relations man, always taking time to entertain the press reporters to keep them hanging around his "shop." He regularly describes him as the beloved son of Hammondsport, NY, while telling how frightened and angered the townsfolk were with his exploits of racing motorcycles around town at breakneck speed or testing noisy contraptions. He describes him as an honest and upstanding citizen who started a commercial company selling airplanes in violation of patent laws for the "greater good" of mankind (ignoring that Curtiss got his information from Augustus Herring, who betrayed the Wrights and first tried unsuccessfully to sell the knowledge to the more ethical Langley). He describes him as an inventor of nearly everything important to modern aviation while explaining that until 1904 he considered anyone attempting flight as a "crank." Yes, the man is a conundrum, a paradox, a riddle.

Unfortunately, he remains so after forcing myself to keep reading this book. If you're looking for an interesting and informative biography, this isn't it. If you're looking for criticism that seldom lets up on attacking the Wright brothers (constantly referring to them as "bicycle mechanics"), or that embarrassingly idolizes Glenn Curtiss, this is the book for you! Other reviews here have documented many of the inaccuracies in this book undermining the author's credibility (I took the time to verify only some of them). Shulman downplays the 64 modifications required to get the Langley machine to fly, describing them as "minor" and "inconsequential," in an obvious and shameful attempt to discredit the Wrights (for which the Smithsonian later apologized). He also ignores that the Curtiss engine used on Baldwin's dirigible at the St. Louis World Fair was far inferior to the one constructed by the Wrights, instead trumpeting it as an enormous accomplishment and victory over the Wrights. And the constant name-dropping of Curtiss' list of associates and acquaintances (no matter how remote) is ridiculous. Also, the lack of any logical timeline is annoying, starting out with Langley's failed 1903 attempt, then bouncing to 1914, then 1906, then 1904, then 1907...

There's no doubt that the Wright Brothers were publicly stiff and perhaps even odd, and that their legal attempts to protect their rights were counter-productive to developing an aviation industry in the US. There's also little doubt that Curtiss was a colorful and interesting personality, even if his personal ethics were a bit wanting. But that's the Curtiss that would have been fun to learn about. Instead of trying to present an objective history or biography and his many contributions to aviation, Shulman's addition is little more than a shrill and error-filled condemnation of the Wrights, seemingly taking it as a personal affront that they tried to profit from their labors. There's little to learn from this book, if you can force yourself through it.