Executive Voices: An Op-Ed Column


Still Soaring
We’re proud that our company continues its flights of innovation


By George Yohrling


One hundred years ago, one of the most significant technological advances in the history of man was made on the dunes of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

What happened there was the stuff of ancient myths. Here was a man -- a human -- using wings to take flight. Here was a single member of a species, which had spent tens of thousands of years tied to earth by gravity while dreaming of taking to the sky, now soaring above the surf for the most extraordinary 12 seconds in history.

There were no crowds. Nor was there any immediate fanfare. All that was needed on Dec. 17, 1903, was the ingenuity of man and the complement of nature -- an engineering marvel known as the Wright Flyer, and a strong wind on which to test its makers’ engineering precepts.

The confirmation of those concepts changed the world. And the improvement to 59 seconds for the Wright Flyer’s second flight represented the first advancement in what would become known as aeronautics, an infant science that mere decades later would lead to our eventual exploration of other worlds.

The grainy black-and-white photos marking that day and the relative simplicity of the Wright Brothers’ craft belie the ingenuity that conceived it. From our 21st Century perspective, the notion of a rudimentary aircraft staying aloft for a mere minute might seem quaintly insignificant. In fact, at the time of the first flights, the world could not yet comprehend the enormity of it all. Orville and Wilbur Wright’s hometown newspaper in Ohio didn’t even consider the event worthy of reporting. But when considering that Neil Armstrong’s lunar “giant leap for mankind” was made possible by the Wright Flyer’s short hop 71 years earlier, the Wright Brothers’ contribution becomes as clear as a cloudless blue sky at 30,000 feet.

Perhaps most amazing is the light-speed pace at which the fields of aeronautics and aerospace have advanced since the birth of aviation a century ago. Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. is proud to have been a part of that amazing evolution. And, as a North Carolina company, we are especially honored to be the only company in the world with a direct connection to three of aviation’s greatest pioneers.

The contributions of Orville and Wilbur Wright and their historic accomplishments in 1903 are well known. However, our company is just as proud of its link to Glenn Curtiss, another aviation innovator who designed, built and tested some of the earliest aircraft.

On July 4, 1908, Curtiss made history himself when he piloted his plane, the June Bug, in a flight of more than a mile, setting a new standard for manned flight. But Curtiss was not content with incrementally lengthening the distance covered through the air -- or with taking flight from, and landing on, the ground. He began experimenting with the concept of a plane that could take off and land on water. After years of tinkering and many failed attempts, Curtiss successfully created the world’s first practical seaplane in 1908 and gave birth to a new mission for the U.S. Navy.

Curtiss joined Orville and Wilbur Wright in the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame this February as the non-profit organization announced its 2003 inductees in honor of the centennial of flight. Curtiss was honored posthumously for his invention of the hydroaeroplane. The Wright brothers were inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1975.

As a result of the successes of these aviation pioneers, Curtiss-Wright Corp. was formed on July 5, 1929, through the merger of a dozen companies with ties to the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss. On Aug. 22 of that same year, Curtiss-Wright Corp. was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, where it is still traded.

Today in our Gastonia and Shelby facilities, North Carolina’s own Curtiss-Wright Controls builds high-tech motion-control devices for state-of-the-art aircraft including the Black Hawk helicopter, the Lockheed F-16 & F-22 fighters and every commercial craft produced by Boeing.

And, in an ironic twist that illustrates just how far aircraft have come in a century, the company tied to the creation of manned flight now produces electronic control computers for the U.S. military's Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft used for surveillance and being considered for use in future combat missions.

Where will flight take us in its second century? We can’t wait to find out. We are proud that Curtiss-Wright and the people of North Carolina will be a continuing part of the process. As we make further discoveries that push the limits of possibility, we will proudly look back on the day in Kitty Hawk, N.C., when a few men looked to the future, and decided the sky was the limit.


George Yohrling is president of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. in Gastonia


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