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Friday, December 8, 2023
The Silver Dart (1908-09), the fourth aerodrome designed by the Aerial Experiment Association, was originally built to carry two men. In the same seat. After AEA member Lt. Thomas Selfridge’s death in an airplane crash as a passenger with Orville Wright as pilot, Alexander Graham Bell essentially forbid his organization’s machines from carrying two people. The photo above shows Glenn Curtiss and Doug McCurdy in the Silver Dart.
Snowbirds by Combat Camera / Caméra de combat Via Flickr: The Canadian Forces Snowbirds, Canada’s air demonstration team, fly in Silver Dart formation over the Strait of Georgia during one of their final show rehearsals at 19 Wing Comox, April 23, 2010. Les Snowbirds, l
(via Silver Dart - First Flight in Canada - Canada )
On this day in 1909, Engineer J.A.D. McCurdy piloted the first powered airplane flight by a British subject in the British Empire - and made Canadian history. The plane was called the Silver Dart, and had been built by the Aerial Experiment Association, a group of like-minded aviation enthusiasts dedicated to creating a "practical aerodrome."
The flight took place on the frozen Bras d'Or Lake at Baddeck on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, near the home of AEA member Alexander Graham Bell. Before a crowd of astonished onlookers, McCurdy took off and piloted the plane for about half a kilometre along the shoreline before making a smooth landing.
The Silver Dart was powered by a 40-horsepower Curtiss engine, and was built using steel tubing, bamboo, friction tape, wire, wood, and rubberized silk balloon cloth.
Besides McCurdy and Bell, the members of the AEA were engineer Casey Baldwin, motorcycle maker Glenn H. Curtiss, and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge of the U.S. Army. In 1908, Selfridge died after crashing in a plane piloted by U.S. flight pioneer Orville Wright. He was the world's first aviation fatality.
McCurdy was born in Baddeck, Nova Scotia but was schooled at St. Andrew's College in Aurora, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Toronto in mechanical engineering in 1906.
After WW2, McCurdy was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, a post he continued until 1952.
AEA Silver Dart
