The Burgess Company was a U.S. airplane manufacturer between 1910 and 1918.

History

The business was incorporated in 1910 as the "Burgess Company and Curtis, Inc." (after

W. Starling Burgess William Starling Burgess (December 25, 1878 – March 19, 1947) was an American yacht designer, aviation pioneer, and naval architect. He was awarded the highest prize in aviation, the Collier Trophy in 1915, just two years after Orville Wright w ...

and Greely S. Curtis, its co-founders with Frank Henry Russell). The company was an offshoot of the W. Starling Burgess Shipyard, of

Marblehead, Massachusetts Marblehead is a coastal New England town in Essex County, Massachusetts, along the North Shore. Its population was 20,441 at the 2020 census. The town lies on a small peninsula that extends into the northern part of Massachusetts Bay. Attache ...

. Burgess was the first licensed

aircraft manufacturer An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology ind ...

in the United States. On February 1, 1911, it received a license to build

Wright Wright is an occupational surname originating in England. The term 'Wright' comes from the circa 700 AD Old English word 'wryhta' or 'wyrhta', meaning worker or shaper of wood. Later it became any occupational worker (for example, a shipwright i ...

aircraft from the Wright Brothers, who held several key aeronautical

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s. Burgess was charged licensing fees of $1000 per aircraft and $100 per exhibition flight. In 1912 Burgess fitted some of its Wright Model F airplanes with pontoons, contrary to the Wright Company's licensing provisions, which permitted only exact copies of their designs. The license agreement was terminated by mutual consent in January 1914. In the same month, January 1914, the organization became the Burgess Company, a name change to avoid confusion with the Curtiss Aeroplane and Engine Company. Greely S. Curtis continued as Treasurer and its major shareholder. Burgess designed and flight tested most of the aircraft that were manufactured at the two plant sites in Marblehead. Curtis was the company's financial and engineering adviser and Russell, formerly the manager of the

Wright Company The Wright Company was the commercial aviation business venture of the Wright Brothers, established by them on November 22, 1909, in conjunction with several prominent industrialists from New York and Detroit with the intention of capitalizing o ...

's Dayton factory, managed their production operations. The Burgess Company was acquired on February 10, 1914, by the

Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company (1909 – 1929) was an American aircraft manufacturer originally founded by Glenn Hammond Curtiss and Augustus Moore Herring in Hammondsport, New York. After significant commercial success in its first decade ...

. The Burgess Company then operated as a manufacturing subsidiary producing Curtiss's naval training aircraft in late 1916 and continued to produce these aircraft under the Burgess name during World War I until its main production facility was totally destroyed by fire on November 8, 1918. The company provided seaplanes and other aircraft to the military. The first

tractor configuration In aviation, the term tractor configuration refers to an aircraft constructed in the standard configuration with its engine mounted with the propeller in front of it so that the aircraft is "pulled" through the air. Oppositely, the pusher co ...

airplane purchased by the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

was a

Burgess H __NOTOC__ The Burgess Model H was an early United States airplane and one of the first air machines specifically designed and built for military use. History Classified as the "Model H military tractor", it was developed and built in 1912 by Burg ...

(S.C. No. 9) in August 1912. In September 1913, a Burgess Model F seaplane based on a modified

Wright Model B The Wright Model B was an early pusher biplane designed by the Wright brothers in the United States in 1910. It was the first of their designs to be built in quantity. Unlike the Model A, it featured a true elevator carried at the tail ra ...

design with pontoons, was delivered to the Signal Corps for use in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

to maintain a flying school. The same aircraft (S.C. No. 17) in December 1914 was the first in the Army to demonstrate two-way air-to-ground

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

communications.

Aircraft

References

Notes

Bibliography

* * *

External links