It was on April 28, 1911 that Edmontonians turned out in droves to the Edmonton Spring Horse Show. But they had come to see horsepower of a different kind. They wanted to witness a moment in history, the first sighting of a powered aircraft flight.
Adjusting his goggles, a gusty Hugh Robinson piloted a Curtiss Model-D Headless Pusher over the Edmonton Exhibition Grounds. The 1918 Curtiss Special, a replica of the first, was eventually used to fly mail across Canada.
The original flimsy American bi-plane, similar in appearance to a box kite, was fitted with a propeller behind the pilot’s seat and a wheeled tricycle undercarriage. It was constructed mainly with spruce, ash, bamboo and linen had a one-passenger capacity. The wingspan was close to 12 metres, and fully loaded its weight reached 590 kilograms.
“You could fly several thousand feet high at about fifty miles an hour if everything was working well,” says Thomas Hinderks, executive director of the Alberta Aviation Museum.
“For its day the Curtiss was a tough plane. There were lots of accidents if you didn’t understand the aerodynamics. You had to be a fairly brave soul to pilot a Curtiss and give a demonstration. They were nowhere as sophisticated as today’s airplanes.”
To mark the 100th anniversary of the first public demonstration of flight in Edmonton, the 84,000-sq.-ft. museum is hosting a special event Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Now retired, Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason will be on hand to relate his experiences.
“This is a gentleman who has flown one hundred years of aviation. He’s flown a replica of the 1909 Silver Dart; he’s flown on the [space] shuttle and everything in between. That’s amazing. I’m jealous, but he is a great inspiration,” says Hinderks who also piloted a 1920s-style bi-plane during Spirit of Edmonton.
Tryggvason earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics at the University of British Columbia and completed postgraduate work in applied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario. He flew on the space shuttle in 1997, spending 12 days in space conducting experiments in fluid science.
Retired from the Canadian Space Agency since 2008, Tryggvason is now founder and president of QDAC Systems, a company that specializes in high-resolution data acquisition systems. He has also lectured at several universities, contributed to about 40 research papers and now holds about six patents.
“I would like people to learn about our aviation history and how for most of the twentieth century, Edmonton was a major centre of aviation. Hopefully people will understand how aviation has changed the world. How one hundred years ago everything was at a walking pace and today you can be anywhere in the world in one day. That changes everything from the exotic fruits we eat to medicine that can be delivered in one day. One hundred years ago, this world would have been unimaginable.”
The museum is at 11410 Kingsway Ave. For admission rates visit www.albertaaviationmuseum.com.
