Left to Right, Standing: A. Roy Knabenshue, Mabel Knabenshue, Frank Coffyn, Walter Brookins.
Left to Right, Seated: Mrs. Frank Coffyn (?), A.P. Warner, Mrs. A.P. Warner.
The photograph was most likely taken during July 1910 when both the Curtiss and the Wright teams were fl ying in Atlantic City, NJ.
Photo: Knabenshue/Koontz Collection
WISCONSIN’S WARNER I
By Giacinta Bradley Koontz
have encouraged you to fi nd monuments, plaques, statues and other tributes to aviation history in your home town or during your travels. For those of you
who are curious, there is no need to leave home. The Internet can take you anywhere in the world to fi nd both the famous and obscure commemorative benchmarks you seek for a famous aviator, aircraft designer, fl ying fi eld or maintenance shed. Or, as it recently happened for me, you might be led to a chapter in aviation history quite by chance. Years ago I assisted in the donation of memorabilia to
various museums from the family of pioneer aviator, A. Roy Knanbenshue. I kept an intriguing copy of a photograph that pictured Knabenshue and his wife, Mabel, with Wright Exhibition Team aviators Walter Brookins and Frank Coff yn. Scribbles on the reverse of this picture also identifi ed Mrs. Frank Coff yn, Mrs. Walter Brookins and A.P. Warner, as well as an unidentifi ed woman wearing a Native American “whirling stick” belt buckle. I wondered why I didn’t know who A.P. Warner was or how he knew Knabenshue. A quick Internet search revealed that Warner had fl own
a Curtiss biplane. Since the Wrights and Curtiss were competitors, if not adversaries, I wondered why I didn’t know more about Warner and how he met Knabenshue. I soon found a bronze plaque on a monument in Beloit,
WI, where Warner fl ew in 1909. The memorial to Warner was placed there during the 1960s when the organization known as the Early Birds of Aviation recognized that Warner had “purchased, assembled and taught himself to fl y a Curtiss Pusher.” A nearby state historic marker gave further details which became the key to a chapter in American aviation previously unknown to me.
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D.O.M.’s offi ces are in Wisconsin, so it was serendipitous for me to identify Warner as the fi rst person to fl y an aeroplane in that state at a spot less than 25 miles from my editor’s offi ce.
MAKING THINGS Arthur Pratt Warner [1870-1957] was born in Florida, but his family soon moved near Beloit, where his father opened a business as a pattern maker. This trade required the combined skills of engineering and metalurgy for making molds and castings. As children, Warner and his brother Charles learned how things were made and envisioned themselves as future inventors. Late in life, Warner wrote an autobiographical sketch titled, “Making Things,” which revealed a man who was both a life-long tinkerer and devoted to his family. Young Warner briefl y lived on a family farm where he disassembled and rebuilt equipment and machinery just to see how it worked. His fi rst invention was a battery-powered motor for his grandmother’s sewing machine. Although he was bright and mechanically gifted, Warner did not aspire to be a scholar, and instead he chose to be self-taught. He later recalled that he learned a great deal of practical science from “Electric Engineering” magazine and later from a two-year international correspondence course in electrical engineering. This independent learning style stuck with Warner throughout his entire life, and he was openly disdainful of high-paid degreed engineers who had not actually built anything. By age 21, Warner was working for an electrical power company in Beloit, improving equipment designs until he became a partner in the business. When that venture left him in debt, he was hired as an engineer by A.O. Fox,
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