The Newark News declared that "the Indian canoe, the Half moon, the Clermont and the Curtiss biplane each represented a human achievement that marked an epoch," while the Providence News believed that "valuable as was astronomer Halley's naming of a comet, Mr. Curtiss has accomplished something of more practical value to the world" and the York Gazette compared the flight down the Hudson Valley by the aeroplane to the conquest of the North Pole. There were other interesting points of view taken by the press, the Birmingham News, for instance, expressing the opinion that the New York World was extravagant, as "it had paid $10,000.00 for Curtiss' ticket from Albany to New York, when it might have brought him down by train for $4.65." The Battle Creek Enquirer said that Mr. Curtiss ought to go into politics, for "a man who can soar as high, stay up as long, travel as far, light as safely, all on wind, would have the rest of them tied to the post." But the Savannah News intimated that nobody could blame Mr. Curtiss from flying away from the Albany Legislature at the rate of a mile a minute. The Birmingham Age-Herald declared that the way was paved for other and greater flights, even across the Atlantic ocean, and indeed, the ocean flight now seemed to the press a not far distant possibility. The Rochester Chronicle-Democrat argued that the bench and bar would now have an opportunity for the exercise of all their legal ability to settle the question "who owns the air!" But it was left to the Houston Post to break into poetry in the following outburst of local pride:
"The wonder is that Curtiss did
Not pass New York and onward whiz
Southwest by south, half south, until
He got where Houston, Texas, is."
But perhaps the most characteristic comments were those like that of the New York Evening Mail:
"In every newspaper that you picked up yesterday you read a thrilling account of the great achievement of Glenn H. Curtiss. The detailed description of his wonderful flight stirred every emotion in you. Chills ran up your spine and tears of joy came to your eyes as you read on and on of the courage of the man who propelled his airship at a speed of fifty-three miles an hour at a height of a thousand feet above the earth. He realised all of the time that a broken bolt or some little thing gone wrong might dash him to death." It is of course quite impossible to give even a small proportion of the bright comments that were made by the newspapers not only of this country, but even by the foreign press. The New York Times sent a special train to follow the flight, on which I rode as the representative of the Aero Club of America. Here is my report in the Times:
"7:02–A. M. Mr. Curtiss started from Van Rensselaer Island, Albany. Jacob L. Ten Eyck official starter for Aero Club of America.
7:03–Passed over the city limits of Albany.
7:20–New Baltimore.