curtissflyingboat

The date on the lower left side of the image says 6-11-13 I don't know what type of flying machine they're sitting in, but they certainly did not go anywhere in it. They were dressed for photo opps, not flying. :-)

It looks like there is something about this in the Smithsonian Arcihves, NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE ARCHIVES Ernest Jones Aeronautical Collection Accession XXXX-0096 (PDF), p. 21: L.A. "Jack" Vilas's flying boat, 1913, with portraits of F.J. Bersbach, H.F. McCormick and Vilas I'm not sure if that really adds any information! Harold McCormick seems to be: Harold Fowler McCormick (1872 – 1941) was chairman of the board of International Harvester Company. (Wikipedia article).

They do appear to be in Vilas's flying boat: www.aviationhalloffamewisconsin.com/inductees/vilas.htm

According to memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=hhdatapage&fileN... a Frank J Bersbach was the son of Alfred Bersbach, owner of a Wilmette Illinois house documented in the HABS survey. See hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.il0312

Harold F McCormick left a collection of aeronautica to Princeton: diglib.princeton.edu/ead/getEad?eadid=C0496 He appears to have been one of the organizers of the first International Aviation Meet held in Grant Park, Illinois, in 1911 and the owner of a hydroplane built for him by Glenn Curtiss. So this may be his own plane.

Mentioned in this wikipedia article on flying boats: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_boat

Here is another Bain photo of a Curtiss flying boat. Glenn Curtiss tested his flying boats on Lake Keuka, one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. He lived in Hammondsport, at the south end of the lake. His first flying boat, the Model E, or Flying Fish, was built in 1912, and is depicted in the photo on this page at the website of the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. I'd say it's the same plane in this Bain photo. This New York Times article of November 23, 1912, describes the test of the craft the previous day. The flying boat in the Bain photo to which I linked in my first paragraph above has a slightly different design—especially noticeable in the tail—and I suspect it may be Curtiss's second such craft, the America, built in 1914.

whyaduck: Thanks for this information. We'll update the source catalog and reload the description.

Captain Arthur S. Cowan (US Army Signal Corps), commandant of the Signal Corps flying school at San Diego, was at the center of "The Goodier Court-martial," one of the most significant events in early American military aviation. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Section,_U.S._Signal_Corps...