Early Flight.

Although powered flight was achieved at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, the airplane industry did not take off until the advent of World War I. The years before the war, however, did see impressive achievements in aviation. In January 1910 the first aviation competition in America was held in Los Angeles. Also that year Glenn Curtiss flew from Albany to New York City in 150 minutes to set a new long-distance speed record. In 1911 there were only about four hundred airplanes in the United States, but the airplane was in the news: Curtiss built the first practical plane with pontoons instead of wheels; Galbraith Perry Rogers flew from New York to California in forty-nine days in sixty-eight segments, with an average airspeed of 51.5 MPH (not until 1913 would speeds in excess of 100 MPH be achieved in flight); and Harriet Quimby, an editor at Leslie's Magazine...