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Outside of these great dominators are, among many others and to mention only their plane names: Detroit Aircraft Corp. (Ryan, Lockheed-Vega, Eastman, Blackburn), Fokker (into which General Motors has bought**), Ford, Pitcairn, Alexander Eaglerock, Savoia-Marchetti, Bellanca, Brunner-Winkle Bird, Consolidated, Fleet, Great Lakes, Stearman, Whittelsey (Aero-Avian), Columbia, Stinson, Swallow, Sikorsky, Cessna, Douglas (which may go to Curtiss-Wright).
The new Curtiss-Wright Corporation hyphenates two of the oldest names in aviation—those of Orville Wright, 57 and Glenn Hammond Curtiss, 51. Mr. Curtiss early flew what Mr. Wright had invented, the airplane. During the bicycling 1890's, the Wrights made "safety bicycles."†† In 1902 Mr. Curtiss began to manufacture motor cycles. While Orville Wright, and his late brother Wilbur, tinkered at Dayton. Ohio, with box kites which would glide and later with motors which would make them fly. Mr. Curtiss at Hammondsport, N. Y., tinkered with engines which would make cycles go mechanically and then with planes which would utilize those motors.
Mr. Wright has a personal reticence which has endeared him to many honorable institutions and societies. To businessmen his reticence seems dourness. He is not connected with the Wright Aeronautical Corp., outgrowth of his original manufacturing company. Mr. Curtiss, on the other hand, has been affable, enterprising and shrewd. He is President of the Board of Trustees of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., holds stock in various companies, but takes little interest in their financial and industrial activities. Among airmen Orville Wright is revered as the inventor of the airplane and its controls. Glenn Hammond Curtiss is cheered as the airplane's great improver, and the father of the flying boat.
Clement Melville Keys, one of the two chiefs in the present Curtiss-Wright Corp. merger, taught classics at St. Catherine's, Ont., at the turn of the century. Ambitious, he went to Manhattan where he became a financial reporter, editor, then banker & broker (C. M. Keys & Co.). The war took him into the air. He became Vice President of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corp., then Chairman of its Financial Committee, then President. Especially during the past three years has he reached out, drawn in and plaited together a powerful aviation organization.
Richard Hoyt went from Harvard (1910) into finance (Hayden, Stone & Co.) and into aviation. The diverse companies which he dominates have been little integrated.
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