1910-1919

Known as the birthplace of Naval Aviation, North Island was the site of the first successful seaplane flight and the first amphibious flight in the U.S., both made by Glenn Curtiss.  The first Naval pilot, Lt. T.G. Ellyson, was trained here at the Curtiss Aviation Camp.  A flight school established here by Ellyson trained the next Naval aviators as well as the Navy’s first aviation maintenance personnel.  North Island was also the site of the first night flight, and the home of the first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley.

The Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, now the core of the Langley Research Center, was a unique facility that served as the nexus of aerodynamic research in the U.S. from its beginning in 1917 to its transformation into NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1958. It achieved world renown for its variety of specialized research tools and its staff’s emphasis on practical solutions to the problems of flight.

This former shipyard was the first home of the The Boeing Company, founded in 1916.  Affectionately called the Red Barn, this structure was built in 1909, and became the historic birthplace of Boeing aircraft production. Starting with the Boeing Model C, all early Boeing production took place in this building. Here, the entrepreneurial spirit of William E.

Igor I. Sikorsky, engineering manager of the Vought – Sikorsky Division of the former United Aircraft Corporation, used the Stratford, Conn., sites to design, build, and test his innovative helicopter designs. Sikorsky’s VS-300 model helicopter was the world’s first design which used the now industry-standard single main rotor with an auxiliary anti-torque tail rotor.

Getafe Airfield was the site of the world’s first successful rotorcraft flight, on January 17, 1923. Lieutenant Alejandro Gómez Spencer piloted a C.4 Autogiro designed and built by Juan de la Cierva, who tested a series of autogiros between 1920 and 1924 at the Getafe site. Cierva’s autogiros introduced important technologies and flight techniques that led to the development of helicopters and other rotary wing aircraft.

The confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers was the site of distinct advances in transportation of the early 19th Century. The Erie Canal in 1825 and the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad in 1831 were both of national significance.  

Spearheaded by Chief Engineer William J. Wilgus and constructed under challenging conditions with no interruption of existing train service, Grand Central Terminal was a triumph of innovative engineering in the design of urban transportation centers. Its novel, two-level station, made possible by electric traction, streamlined both train and passenger movement by separating long-haul and suburban traffic and employing an extensive system of pedestrian ramps throughout the facility.

The big Allis-Chalmers triple-expansion engine is dead, but not to Walter Wilson and Daniel Hoffman. These men are, respectively, division foreman and manager of pumping and maintenance for New Jersey’s Hackensack Water Company; but back in the 1940s they were just starting there as two young engineers fresh out of the Navy, and the engine was very much alive. In fact, it seemed like home to them: “When you were up at the top there,” Hoffman says, gesturing to a lofty catwalk close under the high roof of the pumping station, “and she was going, it was just like being on a ship at sea.”

On 8 April 1911, Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his collaborators, Cornelis Dorsman, Gerrit Jan Flim, and Gilles Holst, discovered superconductivity.   They observed that the resistance of mercury approached  "practically zero" as its temperature was lowered to 3 kelvins.  Today, superconductivity makes many electrical technologies possible,  including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and high-energy particle accelerators.