gained fame as the creator of a number of important airplanes. An accomplished flyer himself, Curtiss won the Scientific American trophy for flying one kilometer on July 4, 1908. He built the first seaplane in the U.S., and his best-known plane, the JN-4 ("Jenny") was widely used in World War I. After the war, the Jenny became popular among barnstormers and was used to carry mail over the Canadian Rockies. Another of Curtiss's planes, the NC-4, was the first plane to cross the Atlantic, in 1919.