One of the best-known prizes of this type was the $25,000 Orteig Prize (Raymond Orteig was a wealthy hotel owner), which was set out near the turn of the century for the first person(s) to cross by airplane nonstop between New York and Paris. Where no government filled the need and no immediate profit could pay the bill, the Orteig Prize stiumulated not one, but at last nine different attempts to cross the Atlantic. Where $25,000 was offered, nearly$400,000 (or 16 times the prize value) was spent to win the prize because it was there to be won.
A beautiful consequence of the Orteig Prize concept was that Raymond Orteig did not have to pay out one cent o any of the losers--by offering a prize, he automatically backed Lindbergh, the winner. It is worth noting, that most of the favorite pilots who sported twin, or tri-engine aircraft, failed miserably, and Lindbergh, considered the underdog, won the prize. One additional financial note for corporate aerospace interests: following Lindbergh's successful flight, aeronautical stocks rose steeply for the following year.
Perhaps equally well known as the Orteig Prize is the Kremer Prize for Human Powered Flight. This Prize which originally started as a £5,000 prize grew to £50,000 and was won by Dr. Paul MacCreedy and his team in 1977 for flying a figure eight along a half-mile course. Following the outstanding success of this rpize, only two weeks later, Henry Kremer himself offered yet another more ambitious prize, £100,000 for the first human powered aircraft to cross the English Channel. On 12 June, 1979, only two years later, a spindly, feather-light craft named Gossamer Albatross made aviation history and won the prize
Next: The X Prize, A Space Prize