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Category: 1920 : CHALLENGE N°13
Photographs of start of Resolute and Shamrock made for The Evening World from Curtiss Airplane, Pilot Olson, at altitude of 250 feet. The pictures were taken by Bide Martin and were delivered within ninety minutes.
Crowds greeted the arrival of The Evening World airplane at Centre and Worth streets to-day, when It brought photographs of the start of the International Yacht Race, taken at Ambrose Channel just as the boats crossed the line.
It took 44 minutes from the start of the race for the plane to swoop down, hold its place while the cameras clicked, and then make the run to New York.
It was 12:40 when the Resolute was officially started, and Pilot John Olson of the airplane pointed the nose of his machine downward. It was a matter of seconds for Bide Martin, the photographer, to make his plates, and the plane circled until the Shamrock went over the line, when the airmen repeated their performance and then headed for New York.
The haze made flying hazardous, but the airplane made nearly a mile a minute on the course followed to New York, the distance being a little more than 30 miles.
The plane was up about 1.500 feet when It came over the city and circled at Canal Street. It then dropped to about 150 feet above the ground and as it crossed the Court House site the parachute was cut away.
Meantime thousands of spectators had gathered. It was the luncheon hour and people on thelr way back to their offices joined a crowd that poured from the tenement section around Mulberry Bend when the word was passed that The Evening World's airplane was circling overhead.
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The parachute, carrying the photographic plates and a streamer banner of the American Flying Club, appeared to be released about 200 feet from the Health Department station. Dr. Royal S. Copeland, Health Commissioner, who had just reached his office after debarking from the ship that brought him back from Europe, was among the spectators of the feat of journalistic enterprise. "It Is easy to realize that I am in America again," he said when he learned what The Evening World was doing. Policemen held the crowds back while men posted by The Evening World ran forward and got the plates, and then sped toward The Evening World office. The plates were rushed through the developing room and the mechanical processes preparatory to printing. The pilot made no attempt to land on the court House site, but immediately on dropping the parachute climbed a couple of thousand feet and disappeared southward. The machine used is owned by Thomas Ash Jr. and Belvln Maynard, "the flying parson". |
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