After the success of the June Bug, the members of Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association designed and built its final airplane, the Silver Dart. It was the first American aircraft built by a team other than the Wright brothers that performed well enough to be considered a practical aircraft.

Thus encouraged, the AEA considered forming a company to manufacture and sell airplanes. Bell told the members (erroneously, it turned out) that they had not trespassed on the Wright patent. They had, in fact, generated a few patentable ideas of their own. In the midst of these discussions, Curtiss received a telegram from Augustus Herring suggesting that the two form a partnership to build airplanes.

Herring had not returned to Fort Meyer in 1909 to compete with the Wrights for the Army contract. Instead, he chose to continue his farce by announcing that he had passed over the Army business for a more lucrative arrangement with a mysterious "foreign syndicate." He told Curtiss that he had patents that pre-dated the Wrights. Curtiss decided to take Herring up on his offer because he assumed that Herrings patents would protect him against a law suit from the Wrights. He never supposed that the patents were another one of Herring's fictions. Curtiss took his leave of the AEA without telling them what he was up to — they would read about it in the papers.

Curtiss unveiled the Aeronautical Society machine, which he called the Golden Flyer, on June 16, flying it from Morris Park in the Bronx. (The press mistakenly dubbed the aircraft the Gold Bug, mixing up its name with the now famous June Bug.) To put a little extra distance between his airplane designs and the Wrights, he mounted ailerons between the wings of the biplane. He began to make exhibition flights and train students. On July 17, he flew the Golden Flyer for 25 miles and captured the Scientific American Trophy for the second year in a row.