[Steven_Verschoor]

Good story.

I wonder: when was the last time a motorcycle made it into Scientific American?

 

[Patrick-of-the-Hills]

I have to totally underline the mention of the Glenn Curtiss Museum. It's a vast hangar full of a massive cross-section of fascinating machines - cars, early bikes, aircraft - and lots of Americana for the not-so-mechanically-inclined.



The Finger Lakes region where Hammondsport happily resides is in general a little bit of paradise on earth, full of beautiful winding roads and wineries (no drinking and riding!), races at Watkins Glen and local artists. It makes for a wonderful long weekend.



(Full disclosure: I'm biased. I was born in Ithaca.)

 

[mile_eater]

You know.. in the early 1900's we had some great minds out there. Men had gumption. Edison... Tesla... Curtiss... Men with brains, and the balls to try something that everyone said couldn't be done.



One wonders what changed in society... for it certainly seems that we are no longer capable of producing such men.

 

[seruzawa]

What [email protected] it tok to travel 136mph with those tires and no brakes. No Joe Rocket jacket, No Arai helmet. Jeeeez.



Too bad he did it on such old technology. Certainly a Ninja would have been a better choice for his speed runs. There were Ninjas back then weren't there? The Japanese did invent motorcycles, right?

 

[seruzawa]

Back then we didn't have thousands of tax funded do-gooders to intefere with any sort of progress. We also didn't have OSHA and the EPA to deny him a permit to build and test his ideas.

 

[sarnali]

What about Steven Jobs and Bill Gates? they revolutionized the computer industry (along with Al Gore who invented the internet.) Or Robert Goddard with rocketry and that Jarvik guy with the artificial heart. Closer to home is Eric Buell's innovative designs, or Vaughn Beals who turned HD from a crumbling dinosaur to an economic powerhouse.

I think the differance now is that from an R&D standpoint corporations own everything, so technological and medical breakthroughs become successes for the such and such corp. instead of the individual who thought them up

Also the time period from the late 1800's to the early 1900's was the peak of the industral revolution, with improvements in metalurgy, tooling , electric power generation and petroleum distillation driven by the navel arms race between England and Germany, all combining with standardized manufacturing to enable ideas to be brought from paper to reality in a consistant manner.

The developed nations at that time where at the height of their evolution from an agrarian farm based economy to the modern industrialized world we live in today.

 

[sarnali]

I'm pretty sure it was the Germans who invented everything.

 

[39970]

Just what I was thinking, with his "package" surely he couldn't have gotten into a good racing tuck (Jockey style maybe?). This guys about as impressive as they come. Maybe Burt Rutan will be remembered for as broad a range of contributions and accomplishment in Aviation but then he doesn't Design, Build and Fly/Ride his creations. Curtiss (and Doolittle) put a lot more than their money where their mouth was.

 

[seruzawa]

Actually the Germans were very clever with mechanics. Too bad that they twice decided to try to rule the world by military means. If they'd stayed with what they did best, technology, they may very well today have been the world's preeminent industrial power.

 

[19616]

Navel Arms Race

Dang, dude, I want to hear more about this navel arms race. Were times so tough people needed weapons affixed to their belly buttons? Were people racing with arms that grew from their navels?

Yet another time when you'd need fringed arm chaps.

Definitely a different breed from us twenty-first century pansies.

 

[4940]

One would have to wonder if the 40 hp claim for the v8 engine was a bit conservative. I have owned a number of unfared motor cycles in the 40 hp range. and none of them were remotely capable of 136 mph. VWW

 

[sarnali]

Re: Navel Arms Race

Umm...That would of course be "naval" arms race.

 

[40446]

wow, faster than present day HD!

 

[Marin_Cycleworks]

I don't know about that - just look at how creative the current administration has been with their interpretations of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions etc.



/maybe not the brains part, but certainly gumption

 

[39970]

I would guess in the range of 60-65 HP to the ground (zero wind). I have no doubt that the bicycle racer did his best to get out of the winds way (is that a chin pad on the tank?). The sand gets hard there but it's hard to imagine that they had the traction of pavement, kind of like Bonneville. Must have been quite a sight and sound.

 

[kpaul]

Nice story, I read a book about the Wright Brothers once where it described Glen Curtiss in Matt Mladin type terms: Competitive, hungry, aloof i.e. not one of the boys.

 

[nokneedragin]

I have allways been facinated by Glenn Curtiss, he was a pioneer in so many areas. Self made and independent. Just wish I had half of the balls or brains he had.

130+ miles on a hand made V8 powered bicycle, no suspension, on sand. Makes the sphincter tighten up, don't it. Then have the thing break underneath you, and control it to a stop.

Thanks, MO. We need to be reminded more of where we came from.

 

[seruzawa]

Glenn Curtiss could be considered the first squid!

 

[seruzawa]

Re: Navel Arms Race

With Clinton's New Look Military it did become a Navel Arms Race. But no one had sexual relations.

Nowadays they are too exhauted from stupid foreign deployments to care one way or the other.

 

[21684]

And Bush invented the "everyone hates America syndrome".