While on a business trip to Dallas, Jay Ingram, a Ford dealer from Decatur, Texas, met Charles A. Foster, an exchibition flier. Foster's flying stories spaarked Ingram's imagination, and the two men struck a deal. Foster would come to Decatur, build aeroplanes, and together they would from the Pioneer Aeroplane Exhibition Company.

In six months, Foster built a copy of a Curtiss pusher that was sturdy enough for limited aerobatics. The wheels, tires and many fittings were purchased from mail order aeroplane supply houses. The ribs, interplane struts and wing sections were custom-made from raw lumber. The wings were covered with cotton or linen fabric and painted with a varnish made from cellulose dissolved in ether. The eight-cylinder Roberts engine was rated at 100 horsepower.

After a series of successful test flights, Foster and Ingram built four additional biplanes. Between 1914 and 1916 they contracted with county fairs in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas to stage exhibition flights. As aeroplanes became more common, however, the Pioneer Aeroplane Exhibition Company received fewer contracts. By 1916 only one airworthy Ingram/Foster biplane remained. Jay Ingram packed the surviving biplane, spare parts and tools in their original traveling crates and stored them, where they remained untouched for 70 years.

In 1968, John Bowden of Lampasas, Texas, a pilot and airplane restorer, learrned of the aircraft and offered to purchase it from Jay Ingram's descendents. In 1986, Bowden purchased the biplane essentially sight unseen, as it was stored in a building too cramped to open the crates. After moving the crates to Lampasas, Bowden found the airplane to be intact and remarkably preserved. He painstakingly reassembled it, and was even able to restart the Roberts engine. In 1987, Bowden sold the plane to the Albuquerque Museum and City of Albuquerque Aviation Department.