Like many an infant, aviation entered the world tentatively when the Wright Brothers coaxed a manned, heavier-than-air powered flying machine off the ground. Flight in America after the Wrights’ achievement was marked more by squabbling over patents than by rapid advances in the science, and the Europeans, particularly the French, seized on the new sport keenly. And sport it was for the most part during the early years, as designers sought to outdo their rivals in speed and spectacle. With the sole exception of Glenn Curtiss’ short-lived mark of 43.35 mph on Aug. 23, 1909 (a record that fell to Louis Blériot’s 46.18 mph in Rheims the very next day), French pilots and designers held the airspeed record exclusively not only during the diaper years of aviation but right through until 1922, when Billy Mitchell, flying a Curtiss HS D-12 near Detroit at 222.98 mph, wrested it from Frenchman Sadi Lecointe, who in turn regained it four months later in a Nieuport-Delage 29.
As noted last month, this monthly tribute to the centennial for the remainder of 2003 will examine aviation’s progress approximately decade by decade, with the emphasis on approximately.
