Glenn martin gliders biography

New Zealanders are famous all around the globe for their inspired, innovative, and sometimes just far-out ways to get from Point A to Point B. MOTAT Stories has pulled together a list of ten inspired innovators from Aotearoa.

Check out these amazing (and often very fun) transport inventions and the dreamers who created them. We've included lots of links to go deeper, so hop on and enjoy the ride!

Richard Pearse invented a powered monoplane in 1903

Richard Pearse was an engineer, farmer and inventor. He is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s first aviators. His monoplane, invented in a farm shed, allowed him to be one of the first people to leave the ground in a powered aircraft. His first flight in 1903 was a somewhat uncontrolled ‘hop’ of about 50 metres, ending in a crash into a gorse hedge. The plane itself was made from converted farm equipment, bicycle parts, and a bamboo frame with canvas stretched over it. (There is even a Richard Pearse Drive in Māngere, appropriately located near Auckland Airport, at the corner of Amelia Earhart Avenue.)

See what is believed to be pieces of one of the first aero engines created by Richard Pearse, currently in MOTAT's collection.

Sir William Hamilton created the Hamilton Jet Boat in 1954

Bill Hamilton was a farmer, inventor, and engineer. He loved exploring the rivers and lakes around his home and as a young man, he dreamed of zooming up the river in a powered boat. He experimented with different motors attached to a small dinghy in the dam on his farm. The jet boat was the first watercraft to propel itself with a jet of water instead of a propeller. This produced a boat that could go very fast, turn quickly, and traverse extremely shallow waters.

Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr established the Te Toki Voyaging Trust in the 1990s

Te Toki Voyaging Trust is a community of people revitalising the art of waka hourua (the traditional double-hulled voyaging c

Glenn L. Martin was born in 1886 in Macksburg, Iowa, but spent most of his early boyhood in Liberal, Kansas. Liberal was located in the heart of a farming country near the eastern edge of the Great Plains. It was still a sort of frontier community, where the people frequently engaged in cattle drives and buffalo hunts. 

Glenn was an enterprising and inquisitive boy, a good student in school, but a boy with many interests outside of school. He was greatly interested in machines, eager to examine and understand them. He was curious about kites and the flight of birds, and he felt that somehow men should find a way to fly through the air. So far they could only fly with balloons.

In Liberal, Glenn's father ran a hardware store and farmed on the side. One summer when the weather destroyed his wheat crop, he sold his hardware store and moved to Salina, Kansas. By now Glenn had broadened his interest in flying and was carefully studying the experiments of men who were working with gliders. For the time being he devoted most of his attention to automobiles and obtained a position as a mechanic.

In 1908 the family moved from Kansas to Santa Ana, California. Here young Martin set up an automobile agency and a garage. His interest in flying had become intensified by the recent experiences of Wilbur and Orville Wright in flying the first airplane.

Young Martin had never seen an airplane, but he was determined to build one. Finally, in 1909, he completed and flew his first airplane. Soon he began to make exhibition flights and within a few years started to manufacture airplanes for sale. By the time of World War I, he was one of the leading airplane manufacturers in America.

During the 1920's and 1930's Martin greatly expanded his airplane activities. He designed and manufactured massive bombers and developed great flying boats, such as the China Clippers. During World War II, his bombers and other aircraft played a major part in winning victory for the Allies.

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Glenn Luther Martin (c1886-1955) of the Glenn L. Martin Co

1912 founded the Glenn L. Martin Company

1916 he merged his company with the original Wright Company, forming the Wright-Martin Aircraft Co.

1917 He soon left the merged company and founded a second Glenn L. Martin Company. That company merged with the American-Marietta Corporation in 1961, becoming the Martin Marietta Corporation. This company merged with the Lockheed Corporation in 1995, forming Lockheed Martin, a major U.S. aerospace and defense contractor.

1955 Obituary

WE regret to record the death of Mr. Glenn Luther Martin, which occurred at Baltimore, on Sunday last, December 4th.

Mr. Martin, who was sixty-nine, built his first powered aircraft in 1908, when he was a garage owner, having already experimented with kites and gliders. It was a biplane with a Ford engine. Shortly afterwards, he organised one of the earliest aircraft factories, and in 1917 the Glenn L. Martin Company was founded at Cleveland, Ohio. With Martin there worked Lawrence D. Bell and Donald W. Douglas, founders of the firms that bear their names to-day.

The firm's Liberty engined bomber biplane was regarded as the first successful twin-engined design in the U.S.A., and was unusually fast for a contemporary heavy bomber.

Fifteen years later another twin-engined bomber, an all metal monoplane, left the Baltimore, Maryland, factory, marking a new level of performance for bomber aircraft. Other twin-engined aircraft, the "Maryland," "Baltimore" and "Marauder," saw service with the R.A.F. in World War II.

An early interest of Martin's was the seaplane, and a four-engined flying boat with sponsons became widely known in the Pan-American "Clipper" fleet. Later flying boats were the wartime "Mariner" and the "Mars." All these aircraft were designed and built while Martin was controlling the company: 1n 1949 he relinquished the position of manager, but

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