[PART I BOYHOOD AND EARLY EXPERIMENTS OF GLENN H. CURTISS by Augustus Post]

[CHAPTER I THE COMING AIRMEN AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER]

The time has come when the world is going to need a new type of men–almost a new race. These are the Flying Men. The great dream of centuries has come true, and man now has the key to the sky. Every great invention which affects the habits and customs of a people brings about changes in the people themselves. How great, then, must be the changes to be brought about by the flying machine, and how strangely new the type of man that it carries up into a new world, under absolutely new conditions!

Each year there will be more need of flying men; so that in telling this story of a pioneer American aviator, his struggles, failures, and successes, it has been the desire to keep in mind not only the scientific elders who are interested in angles of incidence, automatic stability and the like, but also the boys and girls–the air pilots of the future. It is hoped that there will be in these introductory chapters–for whose writing, be it understood, Mr. Curtiss is not responsible a plain unvarnished story of an American boy who worked his way upward from the making of bicycles to the making of history, an inspiration for future flights, whether in imagination or aeroplanes, and that even the youngest reader will gain courage to meet the obstacles and to overcome the difficulties which Glenn H. Curtiss met and overcame in his progress to fame.

Here is a man who is a speed marvel who has beat the world at it. First on land, riding a motorcycle, next in a flying machine, and finally in a machine that was both water and air craft, which sped over the surface of the sea faster than man had ever travelled on that element, and which rose into the air and came back to land with the speed of the fastest express train; a man who traveled at the rate of one hundred and thirty-seven miles an hour on land, fifty-eight miles an hour on the water and who won the first International speed championship in the air.

More than that, they may see what sort of a boy came to be the speed champion and to know some of the traits that go to make the successful airman, for it is said of the great aviators, as of the great poets, they are born flying men, and not developed. The successful flying man and maker of flying machines, such as Glenn H. Curtiss has shown himself to be, realises how dangerous is failure, and builds slowly. He builds, too, on his experience gained from day to day; having infinite patience and dogged perseverance. And yet a great aviator must be possessed of such marvelous quickness of thought that he can think faster than the forces of nature can act, and he must act as fast as he thinks.

He must be so completely in harmony with Nature and her moods that he can tell just when is the right time to attempt a dangerous experiment, and so thoroughly in control of himself that he can refuse to make the experiment when he knows it should not be made, even though urged by all those around him to go ahead. He must feel that nothing is impossible, and yet he must not attempt anything until he is sure that he is ready and every element of danger has been eliminated, so far as lies in human power. He must realise that he cannot change the forces of nature, but that he can make them do his work when he understands them. Some of these qualities must be inbred in the man, but the life-story of Glenn H. Curtiss shows how far energy, courage, and tireless perseverance will go toward bringing them out.