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When Glenn Curtiss Needs Gasoline, Servants are Dispatched
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On May 29, 1910, the day finally came when Glenn Curtiss found the weather favorable, got into his aeroplane, took off from Van Rensselaer Island (now part of the Port of Albany) and flew on (with two stops) to Governors Island in New York City, meeting the challenge set by the New York World…
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Glenn Curtiss Waits For the Wind to Blow the Right Way in Albany
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On May 26, 1910, inventor/aviator Glenn Curtiss was in Albany (we wrote about it here), alternating between his hotel room at the Ten Eyck and Van Rensselaer Island, where there was a two-poled tent that covered his flying machine, a cloth-winged biplane with a V-8 engine of 50 horsepower driving a wooden rear propeller.…
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Glenn Curtiss and the Albany Flyer
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The Wright Brothers first achieved sustained, powered, heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in December 1903. Their first flight was 120 feet for 12 seconds; their fourth and final flight of that day covered 850 feet in 59 seconds. However famous that is now, the flight was barely noticed at the time. Their…
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Phoenixville Phriday: The Pennypacker Tragedy
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Last week we made mention of a railroad tragedy on the Pickering Valley Railroad, where a cow on the tracks led to the death of an engineer. But an 1877 storm led to a much bigger disaster, at the time the most fatal train wreck in Chester County history. On Oct. 4, 1877, a…
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Maps to Swear By, Not At
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Hoxsie is at the age where he has probably forgotten more than he currently knows. And then he’ll run across an old article and the light will go off: “Hey, I used to know that!” For instance, this article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1970 was a reminder that local television personality Jim Fisk,…
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Mann and Anker
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We aren’t very familiar with Mann & Anker (or Mann, Waldman & Co., for that matter), but can only imagine what their store was like in 1898 when Fashion’s Queen held court there and gave her devotees the opportunity to pay her homage. In 1899, both Mann & Anker, “makers of ladies’ garments,” and…
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Phoenixville Phriday: All Caused By A Cow
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Hoxsie was surprised to search through an online archive of California newspapers and find more than a few stories that originated in his newish hometown of Phoenixville, PA. Some were of tragedy, some were of no consequence at all, but all were printed a long way from where they happened. In this case, the…
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The Value of the Telephone (and of Miss Worth)
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Now that we live in a time when it appears that most people feel the need to be engaged in telephone conversations at all moments of the day – while driving a car, while conducting a transaction, while going to the bathroom – it’s perhaps hard for some to imagine that there was a…
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A look inside the offices of the Albany Morning Express
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In its 51 years or so, the Albany Morning Express saw some tremendous changes, which it chronicled in its 50th anniversary coverage. They noted that when they began publication in 1847, the city of Albany contained 45,000 inhabitants, making it the 10th largest city in the United States at the time. There was only…
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Wire Service, Mergenthaler Typesetters and a Lightning Press
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The Albany Morning Press lived through a time of a revolution in newspaper production, and quickly took advantage of the changing technologies, using the newly invented wire services, the Mergenthaler linotype typesetter, and Hoe’s latest presses, not to mention vacuum tubes for moving paper around the office. The telegraph was fairly new to Albany…