Unlocking the Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane

The first public flight in the United States. The first commercially sold airplane. The remarkable first flight from one American city to another. The first pilot license issued in this country. These were just a few of the milestones in the career of Glenn Hammond Curtiss, perhaps the greatest aviator and aeronautical inventor of all time.

Unlocking the Sky tells his extraordinary story — a tale of the race to design, refine, and manufacture a manned flying machine that took pla…