Cafe Scientifique: "The Pulitzer Air Races: American Aviation and Speed Supremacy"

Carnegie Science Center's Podcast

Amidst great fanfare, three American racing airplanes were shipped to France to fly in the prestigious Gordon Bennett Race in the fall of 1920. None completed a single lap of the race. American aviation plunged to a nadir. The Pulitzer Trophy Air Races, endowed by his sons in memory of publisher Joseph Pulitzer, lifted American aviation to the top. In 1923, after the first three of six Pulitzers and an American racer setting world speed records, a French magazine lamented American "pilots have broken the records which we, here in France, considered as our own for so long." Winning speeds increased 60 percent to 249 mph, and Pulitzer racers set closed course and straightaway speed records in 1922, 23, and 25. The winning racers in the 1922 and 25 Pulitzers, mounted on floats, won the most prestigious international air race – the Schneider Trophy Race for seaplanes in 1923 and 25. More than a million people saw the Pulitzers; millions more read about them and watched them in newsreels. Commercially, the Pulitzer racers’ successes promoted sales of American airplanes, engines, propellers, and other equipment both domestically and internationally. This first book about the Pulitzers highlights businessmen, generals and admirals who saw racing as a way to drive aviation progress, designers and manufacturers who produced record-breaking racers, and dashing pilots who gave the races their public face. It emphasizes the roles played by the communities that hosted the races - Garden City (Long Island), Omaha, Detroit and Mt. Clemens, Michigan, St. Louis, and Dayton. The book concludes with an analysis of the Pulitzers' importance, their end, and why their story has languished in obscurity for 85 years. Michael Gough (PhD, Brown University, biology) was a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was a program manager at the Office of Technology Assessment, United States Congress, served on and chaired national committees dealing with various risk assessment controversies in the White House, at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and testified before congressional committees 30 times. Before his retirement, he worked at middle-of-the road and libertarian think tanks and consulted in toxic substances legal proceedings. He published 30 papers in basic science, about the same number of articles about technology assessment and health risk assessment in technical journals, and two dozen newspaper op-eds. His book Dioxin, Agent Orange [Plenum Press, 1986] sold about 6,000 copies, and he has co-authored and edited other books. Since his retirement, he has volunteered at aviation museums and as a teacher of English as a Second Language. He has written articles about airplane racing in the 1910s and 20s and presented talks about them. His book, The Pulitzer Air Races: American Aviation and Speed Supremacy, 1920-1925 [McFarland & Co] was published in May 2013. http://www.amazon.com/dp/078647100X/ref=rdr_ext_tmb Recorded Monday, February 3, 2014 at Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA.