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Iowa's First Flyer
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Carl Bates in his airplane. The bottom half of the card shows the beginning of a race between Bates' invention and an automobile. Bates was from Clear Lake, Iowa, where he experimented with gliders. He made the first flying "hop" in his invention while living in Chicago, thus becoming both the first Iowan and the first Chicagoan to fly.
March 1909
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W0126WL
WHi 11763
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Iowa's First Flyer
March 1909
Carl S. Bates, a young inventor from Clear Lake, Iowa, about to race the Buick owned by Louis Strang on the beach at Daytona Beach. Bates originally challenged Curtiss and the Wright Brothers to a...
Iowa's First Flyer
March 1909
The airplane invented by Carl S. Bates on the beach at Daytona Beach, Florida. Coverage of this event by a local newspaper noted that the advantages of Bates' machine included a highly efficient an...
Iowa's First Flyer
1906
The monoplane glider built and flown by Carl S. Bates of Clear Lake, Iowa. During the previous year Bates had built a bi-plane glider.
Iowa's First Flyer
August 1912
The monoplane built by Carl S. Bates, an aeronautical inventor originally from Clear Lake, Iowa.
Bates Airplane Factory
Workers in Carl Bates' airplane factory in Chicago. The history of Bates' various aviation enterprises is sketchy, but it is known that he built airplanes and motors in Chicago until about 1912 whe...
Racing Car on the Beach
A man wearing goggles drives a Blitzen Benz automobile on the sand along a shoreline. The Blitzen Benz was first built in 1909 by Benz & Cie.
