“Curtiss covered his timed mile in just over 26 seconds, reaching a speed of 136 miles per hour before he let up and engaged the brake. It took him another mile to bring the bike to a halt.”
Read exerpts from the Smithsonian Magazine:
“The 1907 Curtiss V-8 looks like it went fast. It suggests a lifetime of high speed, as if the very wind had cocked the forks back, swept its handlebars out like streamers, even smoothed and elongated its frame. Other motorcycles of the age, like the early Harley-Davidsons and Triumphs, look more like bicycles, with jaunty upright handlebars, cheerful enamel paint jobs and compact motors offering single-digit horsepower. The Curtiss, by contrast, looks vicious: satin-black, ears back, with eight finned cylinders churning out 40 horsepower, a big dog ready to bite.
The engineer and racer Glenn Curtiss wasn’t intimidated by the machine he’d designed when he threw a leg over it and throttled out across the hard-packed sand of Ormond Beach, Florida, in January 1907. But then, Curtiss wasn’t intimidated by much. Continue reading the original article by Elana Scherr
For more on Curtiss and the Hammondsport NY museum in his name, visit: Glennhcurtissmuseum.org/
