num_pages: 288
description: Unlocking the Sky tells the extraordinary tale of the race to design refine and manufacture a manned flying machine a race that took place in the air on the ground and in the courtrooms of America. While the Wright brothers threw a veil of secrecy over their flying machine Glenn Hammond Curtiss -- perhaps the greatest aviator and aeronautical inventor of all time -- freely exchanged information with engineers in America and abroad resulting in his famous airplane the June Bug  which made the first ever public flight in America. Fiercely jealous the Wright brothers took to the courts to keep Curtiss and his airplane out of the sky and off the market. Ultimately however it was Curtiss's innovations and designs not the Wright brothers' that served as the model for the modern airplane.
language: English
title: Unlocking the Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane
publisher: Harper Perennial