Born in
Toronto, Ontario, Casey Baldwin was educated at
Ridley College, Following graduation, Baldwin went to
Ithaca, New York, to attend a summer session at
Cornell University. with the express purpose to "get in the air". Baldwin used his engineering skills to help build the
Silver Dart plus several other experimental aircraft. On March 12, 1908 at
Lake Keuka, New York he became the first Canadian, and either the third or fourth North American, to pilot an airplane.
William Whitney Christmas claimed to have first flown his aircraft on various dates from September 1907 to March 1908 near
Fairfax, Virginia. The first two successful pilots were, of course, the famous
Wright brothers, but it seems unlikely that it will ever be firmly established whether Christmas or Baldwin was the so-called "Third Man." Baldwin also helped design and build the
White Wing airplane and the
Red Wing, piloting the latter in a public demonstration of powered aircraft flight at
Hammondsport, New York in 1908. In the summer of 1908, Casey Baldwin and Alexander Graham Bell began discussing powered
watercraft and began building and testing various types before turning to the construction of an aircraft that could take off from water that the two called a "hydrodrome." While the project was temporarily shelved, in 1919 Baldwin built the
HD-4 hydrofoil that set a world
water speed record of 70.86 mph on
Bras d'Or Lake. However, the watercraft was not a commercial success and the HD-4 project was ended in 1921. Following the death of Alexander Graham Bell (August 2, 1922), Casey Baldwin continued boat building and experimenting in hydrofoils in
Cape Breton as Director of Graham Bell Laboratories. Bell's last words in 1922 were "Stand by Casey," an encouragement to his family to continue Baldwin's work. A local celebrity, in 1933 Baldwin was elected to the
Provincial Legislature as the member from
Victoria County. He was one of the founders of the
Cruising Club of America. Casey Baldwin died in
Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia in 1948. Following its creation, in 1974 he was inducted posthumously into
Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame. In his honour, the
Casey Baldwin Award is granted annually by the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute to the authors of the best paper published in the
Canadian Aeronautics and Space Journal. ==Footnotes==