In the fall of 1909 Olmsted led an attempt by the Pitts company to begin the production of airplanes in contrast to the steam tractors they were producing.
Olmsted minimum-induced-loss propellers set many records in climb rates, speed and weight carried aloft in flights of the Curtiss built flying boats, Edith and America, in 1914, and various military craft during 1917 and 1918.
Because they increased efficient by 20% over the standard design, Olmsted minimum-induced-loss propellers were also used on the first leg of the historic Transatlantic flights of the NC planes in 1919.
Only five years after the first successful powered flight of the Wrights, Charles Olmsted developed the initial equations describing the blade shape and pitch to achieve the maximum attainable efficiency from an airplane propeller.
Such increases in efficiency were crucial for the successful operation of the early Transatlantic Flying Boats, like the America (1914) and the four Curtiss NCs (1919), all of which utilized Olmsted propellers.
After final testing on July 12, 1914, in preparation for the planned Transatlantic flight, Glenn Curtiss publicly announced the Olmsted propellers, “the finest and most efficient I have ever seen.” Two years after developing the propeller equations in 1908, Olmsted formed a syndicate with the Buffalo Pitts Company to develop for mass-production a prototype plane.
Located on the Erie Canal in the port area of Buffalo, the “Queen City of the Lakes”, the company had shipped farm equipment to all corners of the globe (pl.
In the fall of 1909 Charles Olmsted had set up an aerodynamic laboratory on the third floor of the Buffalo Pitts building, where he would test his already-developed mathematical techniques for producing a “minimum-induced-loss” propeller.
In the spring of 1910 Olmsted led an attempt by the Pitts company to begin the production of airplanes in contrast to the steam tractors they were producing.
The prototype plane which Charles Olmsted designed in 1910 for the Buffalo-Pitts-Olmsted Syndicate has raked-back infinitely-variable-camber high-aspect-ratio wings, identical in shape to those of the 1935 DC-3.
It also has retractable nose-first landing gear, an elevated high-aspect-ratio T-shaped tail section, and a gyroscopically stable air-cooled Gnome engine rotating in the direction of travel.
Out of this effort ultimately developed Howard Hughes huge flying boat, the Spruce Goose, as notes from the meeting with John Towers demonstrate ((Olmsted 2020: 226–230.