the flying craze swept through popular culture with films dolls games and songs celebrating The Aviator Pilots like Houdini who appealed to a mass audience were fiercely sought after by the emerging newsreal industry always on the lookout for personalities who worked on camera one of these was Glamour Girl Katherine Stinson the fourth woman in America to obtain her pilot's license Stinson's girlish appearance fascinated audiences around the world and she became known as the flying school girl but behind the curls was one of the best Pilots of the era aged 21 Stinson became boted with flying but at first her local flying instructor refused to teach her because she was a girl she convinced him to take her for a trial flight and after Just 4 hours of instruction flew her first solo Katherine and her sister Marjorie qualified as flying instructors and Katherine became the first woman to perform a loop managing this perilous trick more than 500 times without incident she was the first woman to fly in both China and Japan and the first to be certified as an air Male carrier in 1918 Stinson flew mail to Edmonton Canada where she became the first pilot to deliver mail by air in western Canada also setting a Canadian distance and endurance [Music] record when World War I broke out Stinson offered her Services as a fighter pilot but was turned down due to her sex instead she flew a Curtis JN 4D Jenny of A Sort soon to become famous as the barn storer's airplane of choice and a Curtis Stinson spia a single seat version of of the journey to raise money for the Red [Music] Cross she always used the right control system for her stunt flying a system with two side mounted levers for pitch and roll and top mounted controls for throttle and Y Stinson performed flying exhibitions around the world sometimes pitting her flying machine against the the best racing cars of the [Music] time after Contracting tuberculosis in 1920 Stinson was forced to give up flying and become an architect but her exploits inspired her brothers to found the Stinson Aircraft company which operated for more than 30 [Music] years