During the winter months Glenn gave his hand to making skate-sails, and became very proficient at it, and when summer came and the boys went on bird-nesting excursions in the woods, he was usually the daring one who allowed himself to be lowered by a rope over the cliff's edge or climbed to the topmost limbs of the big hickory trees. At school, mathematics was young Curtiss's strong point, and when finally he came to pass his final examinations in the high school, he topped his class in that study with a perfect score of one hundred, and in Algebra he stood ninety-nine. It is reassuring, however, to find that in spelling he was barely able to squeeze through with a percentage of seventy-five. Glenn sometimes slipped up on the figuring, but the principle was usually right; he had figured that out beforehand. The boys of Hammondsport used to say that Glenn would think half an hour to do fifteen minutes' work. One wonders what they would have said, if they had been told that in after years he was to think and plan and scheme for a year, and then when he was all ready, to wait hour after hour, day after day, to accomplish something requiring a little more than two hours' time; like his flight from Albany to New York, the first great cross-country flight made in America.
When Curtiss was twelve years old his family went to live in Rochester, New York, so that his sister might be able to attend a school for the deaf at that place. He went on working at Rochester after school hours and during vacation time, first as a telegraph messenger, then in the great Eastman Kodak works, assembling cameras. He was one of the very first boys hired by that establishment to replace men at certain kinds of work, and while the men had received twelve dollars a week, Glenn received but four dollars. Before long, however, he had induced his employers to make his work a piece-work job, and had improved the process of manufacture and increased the production from two hundred and fifty to twenty-five hundred a day. He was thus able to earn from twelve to fifteen dollars a week. It was while employed in the camera works at Rochester that Curtiss saved the life of a companion who had fallen through the ice on the Erie canal. When praised for his act of bravery he simply remarked: "I pulled him out because I was the nearest to him."
All during the time that Curtiss was working for others for wages, he continued to tinker making things and then taking them apart. Once he told some of his companions that he could make, out of a cigar box, a camera that would take a good picture. Of course they laughed at him and bet that he couldn't do it. But Glenn did do it, and a picture of his sister with a book was produced and is still unfaded, and in good condition, in possession of his family. He constructed a complete telegraph instrument out of spools, nails, tin, and wire and this so impressed the lady with whom the Curtisses boarded that she remarked to one of her friends that "Glenn Curtiss will make his mark in the world some day; you mark my words." This particular lady tells of the time that Glenn used to talk of airships, and he was not yet sixteen years old. Curtiss was fond of all sorts of sports, taking part in the games the boys would get up after school and on Saturdays. He liked to play ball, to run, jump, swim, and to ride a bicycle.
His time was too much taken up, however, with more productive efforts, such as the wiring of dwellings for electric light or telephones, to permit of much time being given to boyish sports.
He was most original and had a keen sense of humour. He was fond of an argument, and had one striking characteristic; once he had made up his mind as to the why and wherefore of a thing, he could never be induced to change it. To illustrate this trait; one day an argument arose between Glenn and another boy as to whether or not a whale is a fish, Glenn holding that it could be nothing but a fish. The other boy finally reenforced his argument by producing a dictionary to show that a whale is not a fish, whereupon Curtiss asserted that the dictionary was wrong and refused to accept it as authority.
Curtiss was always eager for speed–to get from one place to another in the quickest time with the least amount of effort. He was obsessed with the idea of travelling fast. One of the first things he remembers, says Curtiss, was seeing a sled made by one of his father's workmen for his son beat every other sled that dashed down the steep snow-clad hills around Hammondsport. He begged his father to let "Gene" make him a sled that would go faster than Linn's. "Gene" made the sled and Glenn painted it red, with a picture of a horse on it. Furthermore, he beat every sled in Hammondsport or thereabouts.
The bicycle became all the rage when Curtiss was growing into his early teens and nothing was more certain than that he should have one as soon as he could earn enough money to buy it. And when he got it he made it serve his purposes in delivering telegrams, newspapers, and such like. He developed speed and staying powers as a rider, and soon thought nothing of making the trip from Rochester to Hammondsport to see his grandmother, who still lived in the old home in that village. The roads of New York were not as good as they are nowadays, when the automobile forces improvements of the highways, but Curtiss rode fast nevertheless. In fact, he managed all his regular work this way. His idea was first, to find out just how to do it, and then do it. Then he would find out how fast a certain task could be performed, and get through with it at top speed. The surplus time he devoted to tinkering with something new.
Grandmother Curtiss finally prevailed upon him to go back to Hammondsport and live with her. For a time after his return he assisted a local photographer and his experience in photography gained at this time has since proved of great value to him, and, incidentally, to the history of aviation; for in photographing his experiments Curtiss' pictures have a distinct value, as much for being taken just at the right instant, as for their pictorial detail. Following his photographic employment, Curtiss took charge of a bicycle repair shop. It was a little shop down by the principal hotel in Hammondsport, but Curtiss foresaw the popularity and later the cheapness of the bicycle, and he believed the shop would do a good business. James Smellie owned the shop, but Curtiss' mechanical skill soon asserted itself and he became the practical boss. This was in 1897. George Lyon, a local jeweler, was a competitor of Smellie's in the bicycle business, and got up a big race around the valley, a distance of five miles over the rough country roads. When Smellie heard of the race he made up his mind that Curtiss could win it and went about arranging the equipment of his employee. That race has passed into the real history of the town of Hammondsport. Everybody in the town and the valley was there, and great was the excitement when the riders lined up for the start. They started from a point near the monument in front of the Episcopal church and within a few moments after the crack of the pistol they were all out of sight, swallowed up in the dust clouds that marked their progress up the valley. After a long interval of suspense a solitary rider appeared on the home stretch, hunched down over his handle-bars and riding for dear life, without a glance to right or left. It was Curtiss, who probably has never since felt the same thrill of pride at the shouts of the crowd. The next man was fully half a mile in the rear when Glenn crossed the finish-line.
This was Curtiss' first bicycle race, but later he acquired greater speed and experience and rode in many races at county fairs in the southern part of New York State. What's more, he won all of his races. This was good for his bicycle business, which thrived in the summer, but languished in the winter. During the dull period Curtiss took up electrical work, wiring houses, putting in electric bells, and doing similar work of a mechanical nature. An incident is told of his mechanical skill at this time that illustrates his inquisitive mind. An acetylene gas generator in one of the stores got out of order one day, and no one in the store could tell just how to repair it. Curtiss had never seen a gas generator, but that did not deter him from going at it. He studied it out in a little while and then put his finger on the trouble. After that the generator worked better than ever. A little later he decided to build a gas generator after his own ideas. He started with two tomato cans and built it.
This was the first appearance of Curtiss' two tomato cans. They played an important part in his subsequent experimental work, figuring all the way through from this first gas generator to the carburetor of a motorcycle, and at last to enlarge the water capacity of Charles K. Hamilton's engine on his aeroplane so that he might cool his engine better in making the record flight from New York to Philadelphia and return in the same day. In this first case the two tomato cans developed into an acetylene gas plant with several improvements, and his own home and shop were lighted by it. Later the plant was enlarged so as to furnish light for several business houses of Hammondsport.