Ivan P Wheaton at the Curtiss School

There aren't a ton of photos of Ivan at the Curtiss School, but here are a couple of the better ones. Once again, I'm afraid there isn't much to add to these photos, textually. You may (if I did this correctly) see a difference in the display mode for photos.  It should take you to the Smugmug gallery, where you'll be able to view the photos in a full screen slideshow.

And finally, here is a scan of the logbook entry for the first portion of Ivan's instruction at the Curtiss School.  He transcribed this from his original books toward the end of his flying career.  Unfortunately the original is lost.

Next up will be some photos of the Curtiss Twin JN.  

-kpw

First Flight, January 1916

If you’re just joining us, we’ve recently finished up the auto racing career of my grandfather, Ivan. There are twenty posts primarily covering the 1913 - 1915 Indy 500 race photos in his collection of scrapbooks, with a few dozen photos and newspaper articles detailing some of his own career in racing.

Now, we’re transitioning into his flying career. I’ve been away from posting for a little while, and I’ve been looking for a document that my grandfather wrote around 1960, but have been unsuccessful in locating it. Ralph Cooper had a portion of the letter on a page for Ivan at his Early Birds website, but it’s a blank page there, now. I’ve tried to contact Ralph via a couple of emails, to no avail. I’m bummed, because the text mentioned how he transitioned from racing to flying, as I recall it, and it would be an excellent transition for this post. I’ll post what family folklore has been, and continue looking for this letter.

My sisters and I recall the story about Ivan’s father telling him that racing at Indianapolis was too risky, and that was Ivan’s goal with his racing career. At first, I was dubious after his early lack-luster performances at Fonda, in 1914. Maybe you’ve heard the saying “the older I get, the faster I was”? Now, after his reading about his 1915 season, I think this could have been true. If that letter turns up, it may answer the question.

In any event, Ivan was awarded $400 to go take flying lessons. This part sticks pretty clearly in my mind, and the fact that his father put up the money for it. This first newspaper article states that he travelled on the steam ship Apache. A little bit of internet searching found an article advertising the seven day voyage from New York to Jacksonville, Florida, for $43.30.

 A train probably ran the rest of the way, and his journals mention many, many train trips around the country. The last paragraph concludes with a mention of his military involvement as “musician of company H”. Ivan, in letters home from France describe the bugler as “the music”, and he used to play for us whenever we stumbled on his old bugle in the toy closet. Imagine the sound of a seventy-three-year-old man trying to play the bugle, and a small boy wondering if it was really true after hearing it.

I don’t usually include all the newspaper articles Ivan pasted in his scrapbooks, since there’s so much overlap in them, but this one adds some fascinating, and incredible news. Notice in the headline below, the words, “at Rate of Dollar a Minute.” Adjusting for 2010 dollars, that’s the equivalent of nearly $1200 per hour. My friend Simeon is a CFII, and his estimate for my area in Oregon is about $165 per hour. That covers the instruction and the plane, wet (including the fuel). If it took you the full forty hours of instruction to get a private pilot's certificate today, that would average to about $6500. That $400 in 1916 would translate to about $8,000 in 2010. Still a bit pricey, and we’ll learn soon how many hours of instruction Ivan received before obtaining a certificate.

His first logbook entry is on January 18, 1916. The heading across these pages reads “Palm Beach, Florida. - City Park, West Palm Beach, Florida. Under “Type of Machine”, he has written  “Curtiss Flying Boat”. Under “No. of Machine” it reads (this text takes up 2/3 of the page spanning the rows) “ Curtiss F. Boat formerly owned by David McCollough. Curtiss Control”. At the bottom it reads “OX motor & one O motor built into an OX.” I’ll have a great picture showing the Curtiss controls and a description in an upcoming post. He lists “20 minutes” and “1” under “Duration of Flight” and “Landings”. In the column “Height” he has written “neglected to keep record of altitude” over the first dozen or so flights. It’s interesting that Eden let him fly on quite a few trips without giving formal lessons. I’ll put all of these logbook entries in a table so that all the entries are shown. I will probably include a few scans of the logbook as well, but I don’t want to handle them too much, as they’re stitched together.

I’ll touch on what little I could find about Frederick C. G. Eden. His middle initials made me chuckle, as it may some of the pilots or aviation types following this. C.G. is pilot shorthand for Center of Gravity which is a pretty critical point for aircraft weight and balance, but Fred’s middle initials actually stood for Colvin George. He apparently was the 6th Baron Auckland which he succeeded to in 1917, and you’ll see mention of his mother, Lady Auckland in photos and newspaper stories coming up. He gained the rank of Flying Officer in the RAF volunteer reserve, and held the office of Assistant to the Air Attaché to Paris in 1940, according to one genealogy. He was killed in a German air raid on London in 1941 at the age of 46.

Here's a photo of Mr. Eden, a bit later in life I found online at http://www.npgprints.com while researching.

Many more Curtiss Flying Boat photos as well as Eden, another student, and places and people around Palm Beach, Florida in the next post.

-kpw

Filling in - Race three

Ballston Spa, New York is the site of Ivan's next race, in which it appears he was not actually scheduled to race.  Ballston Spa today appears to be a very small village, situated twenty miles east and a little north of where Ivan grew up in Amsterdam, New York.  I found the following information interesting:

The community was named in honor of one of its earliest settlers, Reverend Eliphalet Ball. Ballston Spa was officially incorporated as a village in 1807. This area was once famous for its mineral water spring, which was believed to have healing powers. Ballston Spa was also known as the site of the Souci Hotel, which was one of the largest hotels in the world in the 1800s. This village was also the birthplace of the supposed creator of baseball, Abner Doubleday.

I've only included the text that pertains to Ivan's event from the newspaper clipping, this time.  The papers seemed mostly interested in the motorcycle races at Ballston Spa, and gave it a good three quarters of the article.  It seems that Ivan wasn't driving his Chalmers at this race in October of 1914, and we'll understand why, soon.  Ivan did not participate in the ten mile race, so I also passed over that event.

This photo is the best of the bunch for the racing at Ballston Spa, but it's difficult to tell which race this is.  Race one lists seven starters, and I count eight cars here.  Race two lists ten starters, but it's possible that some cars didn't race.  Like the last post, who knows, and who cares?  It's just fun that there are photos of the event at all.  It doesn't appear that the race was very well attended, though.  I see a lot of empty seats in the grandstands.

So, Ivan is racing a "Stearns car owned in Saratoga" according to the article, and he finishes a familiar third out of perhaps ten starters.  I'm making the assumption that this is his third race, since he was pretty avid about posting these clips and photos of his racing.  It is possible that he has raced more, and we just don't have record of it.  He's not doing badly if this is the extent of his experience, since there are considerably more cars which are starting these races.  Seems like Jones and Stewart have local racing pretty securely tied up with their Fords.

This handbill from the race is tucked in between the pages of the scrapbook with the press clippings.  This provides the answer to why Ivan wasn't racing his Chalmers; he wasn't even there to race!  He came to serve as "Assistant Starter".

And the back of the handbill shows that Ivan raced in the place of a Mr. Hamm, for reasons that are not known.  Did Ivan charm his way into a driving spot at the last moment?  Maybe this was a customer of Wheaton Automobile Company, or perhaps a family friend.

I'll finish up this post with a photo of one of the motorcycle racers, just since it's such a fun photograph.  Next up will be another race at Fonda.

-kpw
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Indy 500 1915 post 3

I got an amazing email this week from a gentleman whose name you'd all recognize from the world of auto racing regarding the collection.  I never stopped to think that anyone who was really, seriously involved in racing would be reading this blog, for some reason. A stroke of incredible coincidence brought him here to begin with.  I hope he'll continue to follow the blog.  I'm sure he could educate us all on these photos, but I doubt he has the time. 

It left me feeling a little foolish for my flippant comments on the photos here, though.  I suppose I could have spent a greater amount of time studying the history of the race, in order to give an accurate account of what transpired there.  However, as I've said before, I'm not a historian in the sense that I'm doing a great deal of research on the collection, or on racing.  Honestly, I've been pushing through this section since my real passion is aviation, and it's a bit difficult to "gin up" any enthusiasm.  Even when we're finished with the Indy 500 photos, there are ... (one sec, I'm counting) ... well, only four pages of Ivan's racing career in this scrapbook.  If there are more in another, I'll fill that in later.

Well, enough dawdling!  Let's jump back into the photos.  Let's see, I left off with Howdy Wilcox, so next we have a shot of Eddie O'Donnell.  This is another case where there's just not much doubt about who's in the picture.  Ivan also saved me the trouble of looking up his date of death, but I did find an article claiming Eddie's Dusenberg had the largest engine at the track this year, with 299 cu. inches. 

Ivan followed this photo with a somewhat decent photo of the race itself.  Still, it's difficult (for me) to get too excited about this from a photographic standpoint.  It may shed some light on the race for those who are more knowledgeable, so I'll post it.

The next photo is positioned between a couple of photos of car #22, so I'm going to assume this is Ralph Mulford.  Rather than writing a sentence about an article recommending a book (which I just did, to be clear), I highly recommend this article about Ralph Mulford.  I bring it up since there was some controversy surrounding his second place finish of the race in 1911.

Next up is a photo that I've been chomping at the bit to post!  I just love the action in this photo, and the angle!  The thing that baffles me is the car number.  Who drove car number 40?  This was the mystery driver that I mentioned in the last post.  Well, I did a little digging, and the reason I couldn't find this car in the official race records is that it didn't race.  So, as I've speculated in the past, perhaps more of these photos than I've given credit to were during qualifying attempts.  This is Charles Shambaugh, who failed to qualify, but looked ridiculously cool while doing so.  Here's a post found at OldRacingCars.com:

A mechanic, Shambaugh owned a dealership and workshop in Lafayette, Indiana. He was also a carriage builder and a pioneer of the automobile in the area. He was involved in numerous other projects, including cranes, trucking, construction and airport businesses. Died after a farm accident (June 4, 1940).

These candid photos of the drivers in the scrapbooks are pretty fun, and there are a few of them coming up.  This next one is of Bob Burman, who placed 6th this year, earning $2,200 for his team.  Burman has raced in all previous Indy 500 races, and if I'm reading the stats correctly, this is the first time he's finished in the money, and the last time he raced at Indy.  I figure I should include the photo of him in his car as well, as one follows the other in the scrapbook.

Billy Carlson also finished in the top ten at Indy this year.  He raced twice at Indy, and took 9th place both in 1914 and 1915.  In 1915 he actually did not finish the race, but had a relief driver named Hughie Hughes, according to The Old Motor.

The next two photos are probably the highlight of the Indy photos in the collection to me.  I was a WWI aviation nut from the time I was old enough to hear stories and build model airplanes, and I loved hearing about Eddie Rickenbacker.  I'm not sure when I was aware that he was also a race driver, probably not until many years later.  But when I first went through these photos about ten years ago and started to catalog who was in the collection, I was astonished to find these photos.


Ivan has them out of order, of course.  We have a photo of Rickenbacker out of his car, looking really dejected, out of the race after lap 103.  Next we have a photo of him smiling prior to the race, and one pretty unremarkable photo of him on the track which I'll not include.

Just not enough time to finish up the Indy photos.  Next post will finish that section and we'll spend a bit of time looking at Ivan's racing career in 1915.  Still a few great Indy photos left.  

Thank you all for the "Likes", and "Shares"!  This really helps get the word out to others who might be interested in reading the blog.  The other button that I've added called "Send" lets you send the link to specific folks on your friends list or via email, apparently.  The +1 button will recommend the blog on the Google search engine, which would be very nice, if you're so inclined!  Many, many thanks.

A last minute addition!  David Greenlees' excellent website has been a source of information here, and I've invited him to link photos from the collection.  He has some great articles on racing!  I especially enjoyed "Carl Fischer's World Beater". Go check out The Old Motor.

-kpw

1914 Indy 500 Continued...

It has been a very busy week with school, but I'm winding down this afternoon and plowing into the scrapbooks.  I don't handle these very much, since they are so delicate, and they are just shy of 100 years old.  It's apparent that my grandfather enjoyed them, and must have gone through them with friends many times over the years.  When I do get to slow down and pay attention to each photo, do some internet searching and cross-referencing of other photos in the scrapbook, it's an adventure.  It really is like discovering an old abandoned house, or warehouse full of related items that tell a story once you look at them in context.


This weekend I'm finishing up the Indianapolis 500 from 1914.  There are so many photos that are exceptional that I'm hard pressed to choose, and I have a fair collection to show you today, so I'll get  started!


I'll begin with a great photo of René Thomas in his car.  I'm pretty sure this is following the race, but it's arranged very near the beginning of the sequence of photos in the book.

This next photo, is actually a scan of 2/3 of a page of the scrapbook.  I just couldn't decide which of them I would eliminate, and I thought it would give a good feel for what a page looks like.  It was nothing fancy, just some glue and the page in the scrapbook.  The photos aren't  carefully cut, and you may be able to see that they were not particularly carefully developed, either.  One interesting aspect that I've been meaning to mention can be seen in the photo in the lower left.  You see this in many racing photos in the early years of racing.  It's caused by the way the shutter worked in old cameras, and began allowing light to strike the emulsion at the bottom, working its way up.  Here's a fantastic explanation, with an animation to drive home the point.  The same photo gives a good view of the famous bricks of the speedway.

This is probably one of the most interesting photos of the bunch, to me.  I love the feeling of speed and the closeness of the action. It is uncharacteristic of many of his photos, more daring, and creative.  Maybe he was just too lazy to stand up and take the photo?  Part of the fun of exploring photos is that they connect you to the photographer, as well as the event.  

I love the idea by the great photographer, Gary Winogrand, where he said that "...putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it".  This was just a racecar going past my grandfather as he sat in the grass, and he put his four edges around this in a really well composed photo, probably spontaneously.  Look at how the scene opens up from the left.  The road divides the frame vertically, organizing the image. The lines of the road opening up as it leads to the right dragging your eye along with the action.  The blurry foreground pushes your eye up into the action as it comes into focus, and the grandstands in the back contains people looking for the next car to come by as this one roars out of the photo.  This car is driven by Georges Boillot.

Next is a photo of René Thomas (center), the race winner, and Barney Oldfield on the left.  I'm not sure who the other person is, but I think it's his mechanic.  The other Stutz drivers were Gil Anderson and Earl Cooper, neither of whom finished the race, and this guy's face is still pretty dirty.  I absolutely love the body language and the eye lines here.  The guy on the right, leaning in toward the race winner, and Oldfield with his stogie, giving him a look.

I wanted to include this photo of the pits area since it provided some information you don't usually see in photos of the race.  Again, it connects me to what my grandfather found interesting.  My eye was drawn to the keg of gasoline, and the various tools, buckets, and gestures by the gents in the pits.  I also like the depth of field, and how it excludes some of the people who are part of the conversation.

Here's a shot of Barney Oldfield cruising by, a quick glance for the photograph.  Awesome.  I love his stogie, hard to believe he raced with this (at least with one that was lit), and he's pulling off the track, so very obviously post race.

Another really well-composed photo, I thought.  Gil Anderson in car 24 goes screaming past at 90+ miles per hour.  Probably more, but I'm no race historian.  I figure if these guys qualified at 90 mph, they must have hit 100 at times.  I appreciate the lines here, again.  The perspective gives a sense of grandeur - the amount of folks watching the race, and the distance of that section of the course.  He opens up the depth of field going really deep, so that nearly the whole scene is in focus.  To me, this is a defining photo in some ways.  It tells me that it wasn't a great camera, and the photo wasn't given a whole lot of care in processing.  Van's photos are crystal clear and are taken on good equipment.  I don't know what the camera was, but all of these photos are 3x5 format.

I alluded to a wreck in the last post, and here it is.  I out of time to research this, but if someone has some information, please post!  I'm posting this for the same reason as the tires/pits photo; you just very rarely see this aspect of the early races.  Here's the car driven by Joe Dawson.  The wikipedia entry cites "Crash BS".  I'm sure Joe agreed.

Just a couple more photos to wrap up this section of the scrapbook.  First is a great photo of Spencer Wishart, although probably not a great action photo of him racing.  I'm like a broken record here, but again I get a glimpse of what was important to Ivan.  He's clearly into racing by this age, and he knows first hand what racing is about.  It's not always winning the race, and this photo and the ones preceding it show that he was connected to the drama of the whole race, not just the big win.

Jules Goux congratulates Barney Oldfield after the race.

Finally, I believe this is the number 16 car of René Thomas winning the 1914 Indianapolis 500.  The car is the right shape, and the number appears to be 16 on the car (with a magnifying glass).  The sign to the flagger's right reads "16".  I wonder why he didn't make his way further down there to capture this, but I can imagine it was a zoo around the finish line.  The camera was by no means a new invention at the time, and there were plenty of photographers at the race. 

Next photos will be of the Indy 500 in 1915, with a couple of very good photos of Eddie Rickenbacker.  The first photo captures his high hopes at the beginning of the race. Rickenbacker threw a rod at just over half way through the race, and the second photo shows the disappointment as he exits his car to take it all in.

-kpw

1913 Indy 500

I'm picking up the story in 1913, which is where there are a load of pictures of the Indianapolis 500.  I have another scrapbook full of family photos with cars, the Chalmers factory, a tire company, and more... cars.  I think I'll spare you all the tedium of looking at pages and pages of old... cars.  I'm trying to get to the airplanes as quickly as I can, but the racing photos occupy a large chunk of these scrapbooks.  There are also a few motorcycle racing photos just prior to these.  I'm open to requests if you'd like to see them.

I have no way of knowing whether Van and Ivan had crew passes, press passes or none of the above, but there are some fabulous photos taken on the track, and in the pits.  Perhaps someone will know the race particulars better and fill us in. 


I began thinking of how far it is from Amsterdam, New York to the speedway.  I'm from California, originally, so what do I know?  Turns out that today you can make the drive in about 13-14 hours by interstate.  In 1913 you would have probably taken the train, and the New York Central Railway (seriously, look at this link) would probably have been the choice.  I won't speculate on the time, but I can imagine... oh wait, I'm speculating.  It took a while, longer than it takes today by a wide margin, what with changing cars and such.  The scrapbooks suggest that the whole family took the trip, which would have included Cora and Corinne.  I guess the train ride was boring to them, since there are no photos of the actual trip.  Anyway, pack up our trunks with cameras and film and off we go.

Pre-race pits of Louis Disbrow.  High tech jack there, fellas.

Jules Goux won the race in this Peugeot. He hasn't started drinking, yet.

Pre-race. Jack Tower's Mason, Harry Endicott's Nyberg.

One of my favorites.  Louis Disbrow, perhaps qualifying? (stands are empty)

I think these photos are from qualifying, since you can see the #15 Peugeot behind Joules Goux's car in the pits. This car did not race, and I have a photo of it with the side of the hood blown open, about the size of a runaway piston or something.

I changed my cropping with this last photo, and I'll likely stay with this from now on.  the first three photo's show that the prints were hand cut, which I thought was cool at first, but now I just think its distracting.  Also, in the last photo, I'm wondering if Van or Ivan was standing on the track, or did they find a hole in the fence to shove the camera through for the shot?  Finally, it's just a fabulous composition, probably the result of releasing the shutter right when the car was in the center of the photo!  Heh.


That's enough for tonight... a few more 1913 coming very soon.  I've decided I'm not going to rush forward to the airplanes (my apologies to Brian Karli, who was the inspiration for this blog, btw).  There are just too many good photos to pass over in order to get there.

-kpw