The American aviation pioneer Glenn Hammond Curtiss (1878-1930) developed the first successful seaplane and manufactured the famous World War I Jenny training plane.

Glenn Curtiss was born in Hammondsport, N.Y. After finishing grade school, he moved to Rochester, working for the telegraph company and later for the Kodak Company. But having acquired a taste for mechanics and a passion for speed, he returned to Hammondsport and opened a bicycle shop. He raced bicycles and won many prizes locally and statewide. When motorcycles became available, he began to race them as well, and in 1902 he started to make and sell first the motors, then the entire motorcycles, at his shop. He became famous as a racer and in 1906, riding an eight-cylinder cycle of his own construction, set a speed record of 137 miles per hour, which stood for 20 years.

After the dirigible balloonist Thomas Scott Baldwin ordered an engine...