2-839-521 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Pusher biplane with one 50-horsepower Curtiss V-8 engine. Fabric covered surfaces light yellow. Struts and landing gear orange. In 1909, the G.H. Curtiss Manufacturing Company delivered the firm's first airplane, a pusher design with elevators in the front, called the Golden Flyer, to the New York Aeronautical Society. In 1911, Curtiss began to concentrate on the military market, selling three airplanes to the U.S. Navy. Curtiss continued the evolution of the pusher design with the development of the D-II (the Golden Flyer was considered the Model D) and the D-III, to which a second set of elevators were added to the rear in place of the fixed horizontal stabilizer formerly used on the D and D-II models.