Glenn Hammond Curtiss
If you do the research you find the dispute between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss to be most interesting. The Wright brothers were the first to fly an airplane and they did make some amazing design break throughs. The interesting part is that they actually were trying to patent the airplane since the ideas they had were essential to flight. So they were the first to fly.
But Glenn Curtiss had more significant "firsts." It was a Curtiss plane that was flown by Eugene Ely, a company exhibition pilot, that made the first successful takeoff from a Navy ship in 1910. It was Eugene Ely who would successfully land on and takeoff again aboard another Navy ship in a Curtiss plane. And it was Glenn Curtiss who pioneered the design of the first floatplane and the flying boat. Another Curtiss plane, the NC-4, made the first crossing of the Atlantic in 1919. Glenn Curtiss also built the first U.S. Navy aircraft, called the Triad, and also trained its first naval pilots.
