Chapter L: M. Wainwright, president of the Diamond Chain Company, of (1)

Indianapolis, became interested in the Wrights’ transmission problem, and gave them valuable advice.

The Wrights found that the chains would have to be run through guides to prevent slapping and to overcome undue stresses on the machine. They adopted tubular guides and found that they could cross one of the chains in a figure eight and thus have the propellers running in opposite directions.

Not until September 23 was all in readiness for the Wrights to set out for Kitty Hawk. They were able to make good connections with a boat and arrived at camp two days later, on a Friday. Discussing en route what they hoped to accomplish, neither had the slightest doubt about the fulfillment of their dreams. Besides being full of confidence they also felt the exuberance of excellent physical condition. Orville was now thirty-two years old and Wilbur thirty-six. Five foot ten and a quarter inches in height, Wilbur was the taller of the two by a little more than an inch and a half. Orville weighed 145 pounds, about five more than Wilbur. Each of them had grayish-blue eyes and they might have been recognized as brothers, though in their own family Wilbur at that time was considered “more of a Wright” in his facial conformation. Orville looked a little more like his mother. Both were suitably built for bird men.

Plenty of annoyances, difficulties, and delays were still to be faced. When they reached their camp near Kill Devil Hill, the Wrights found that a storm had blown it from its foundation posts. They repaired the shed and also built a new one. With two sheds they had enough space for housing both the 1902 glider and the power machine, and also for a better workshop.

Just as the new building was nearing completion, the Kitty Hawk region had one of the worst storms in years. It came without warning, soon blowing forty miles an hour, and increased during the night until the next day the wind was more than seventy-five miles an hour. Orville risked climbing to the roof to nail down some of the more exposed parts. But by the time he got to the roof edge, the wind had blown his coat about him in a manner to pinion his arms and leave him helpless. Wilbur rushed to his assistance and held down his coat, but the wind was so strong that it was almost impossible to swing a hammer accurately enough to hit a nail.

Three weeks were needed for assembling the new machine. From time to time, also, they took out the 1902 glider, still in fairly good condition in the shed where they had left it, and got practice. After the first few trials each brother was able to make a new world’s record by gliding for more than a minute.

It was hoped to have the power machine ready for its first trial early in November. But at the first run of the motor on the completed machine, an unexpected strain from back-firing twisted one of the propeller shafts and tore loose the cross-arm to which the propeller was fastened. Both shafts were then sent back to the bicycle shop at Dayton to be made stronger. Dr. Spratt had arrived on October 23 to witness tests of the new machine, but the weather had become so wintry that he started home on November 5, taking with him as far as Norfolk the shafts for shipment to Dayton.

Octave Chanute came, on invitation, the next day, but he too found it difficult to be comfortable with the weather increasingly wintry and he stayed less than a week. Before leaving camp, Chanute had unintentionally given them something else to worry about. He had remarked that at least twenty per cent usually must be allowed in chain transmission for loss in power. As the Wrights had allowed only five per cent, they felt considerable alarm.

Since Chanute was a capable and famous engineer, it seemed prudent to find out whose estimates were more nearly correct. After Chanute had gone, the brothers suspended one of the drive chains over a sprocket and hung a bag of sand at each end of the chain. By measuring the amount of weight on one side needed to lift that on the other, they calculated the loss in transmission. As nearly as they could tell, this loss was even less than the five per cent they had estimated.

The shafts, made of larger and heavier tubing, arrived from Dayton on November 20. When they were tested again, a new difficulty appeared. The sprockets, which were screwed to the shafts and locked with nuts of opposite thread, kept coming loose. This was a small problem, and yet the brothers did not at once see any way to solve it. They went to bed discouraged. The next day, however, they tried, as they often did, something they had learned in the bicycle business. They had found a great variety of uses for the kind of cement intended for fastening tires to rims. Once they had used it successfully in fastening the hands of a stop-watch that several watchsmiths had said was beyond repair. Why not try tire cement on those sprockets? They heated the propeller shafts and sprockets, poured melted cement into the threads and screwed them together. There were no more loose sprockets.

Just as the machine was ready for test, bad weather set in. There was rain or snow for several days and a wind of twenty-five to thirty miles an hour from the north. But while being delayed by the weather the Wrights were not idle. They busied themselves contriving a mechanism to measure automatically the duration of a flight from the time the machine started to move forward to the time it stopped, the distance traveled through the air in that time, and the number of revolutions made by the motor and propeller. A stop-watch took the time; an anemometer measured the air traveled through; and a counter took the number of revolutions made by the motor. The watch, anemometer, and revolution counter were all automatically started and stopped simultaneously.

During this time, the Wrights occupied themselves also in making tests of the strength of the wings, as well as many satisfactory tests of the engine. During a test of the engine, on November 28, they discovered that one of the recently strengthened tubular shafts had developed a flaw and cracked!

With winter almost upon them, there was no time to trust to express service in getting the shafts to Dayton. Orville decided he would go there at once. Instead of tubular shafts, they would use solid tool steel, necessary, it seemed, to take up the shock of premature or missed explosions of the engine.

Not until Friday, December 11, did Orville get back to camp. (En route, he had read in a newspaper of the last unsuccessful attempt to fly the Langley machine over the Potomac at Washington.)

It didn’t take long to install the new propeller shafts and the next afternoon, Saturday, the machine was again ready for trial. But the wind was so light that a start could not have been made from the level ground with a run of only sixty feet permitted by the monorail track to be used. Nor was there enough time before dark to take the machine to one of the near-by hills, where, by placing the track on the steep incline, enough speed could be promptly attained for starting in calm air.

All day Sunday the Wrights just sat at the camp and read, hoping for suitable weather the next day. They were now particularly eager to avoid delay because of their boyish craving to be at home by Christmas. If there should be a spell of bad wintry weather they might have to stay at Kitty Hawk for another two or three weeks.

Monday, December 14, dawned beautifully clear, but cold, and there was not enough wind to permit a start from level ground near the camp. The Wrights therefore decided to attempt a flight from the side of Kill Devil Hill. With a relatively light wind it should be all the easier to handle the machine. The pilot, whichever one of them it should be, ought to be able not only to fly successfully but to go on down far beyond the Kitty Hawk life-saving station, nearly five miles away, before landing.

Contrary to reports of secretiveness, the Wrights, naturally desiring witnesses, had extended a general invitation to people living within five or six miles to come and see their first attempt at flight. But it was impossible for them to send word or give a signal as to the exact time the attempt would be made. They had arranged, however, to put a signal on one of the sheds that could be seen from the Kill Devil Life-Saving Station only a little more than a mile away. Members of the life-saving crew were on the lookout for the signal. Soon after the signal was hung against the wall of the shed, the Wrights were joined by John T. Daniels, Robert Westcott, Thomas Beacham, W. S. Dough, and “Uncle Benny” O’Neal. All helped to get the machine to the place selected, a quarter of a mile away, on the hillside. It would not have been easy to drag the 750-pound machine that distance and the Wrights used a characteristic bit of ingenuity. They set the machine on the monorail track they were going to use for the take-off, slid it along to the end of the sixty-foot wooden rail, then took up a rear section of the track and added it to the front end. By thus re-laying the track over and over, they were able to have the machine run on wheels all the way. The sled-like skids that were the landing gear of the machine rested on a truck--a plank about six feet long, laid across a much smaller piece of wood to which were attached two small wheels, one in front of the other. Each was kept on the track by two vertical guides. These little wheels had ball-bearings. They were modified hubs from wheels of a bicycle. The rail itself was two by four inches, set on edge, with the upper surface covered by a thin strip of metal.

As soon as they reached the hill, the Wrights prepared for the test. Each was eager for the chance to make the first trial, and they tossed a coin to determine which of them it should be. Wilbur won the toss.

After the machine had been fastened to the track by wire to prevent its moving until released by the operator, one of the Wrights started the motor and let it run for a few minutes to make sure it was working properly. Then Wilbur took his place on the machine. Two small boys, with a dog, who had come to see what was going on, were scared away by the noise of the motor.

Here is Orville Wright’s own account[3] of what then happened:

I took a position at one of the wings, intending to help
balance the machine as it ran down the track. But when the
restraining wire was slipped, the machine started off so
quickly I could stay with it only a few feet. After a 35- to
40-foot run, it lifted from the rail.

But it was allowed to turn up too much. It climbed a few feet,
stalled, and then settled to the ground near the foot of the
hill, 105 feet below. My stop-watch showed that it had been
in the air just 3½ seconds. In landing, the left wing touched
first. The machine swung around, dug the skids into the sand
and broke one of them. Several other parts were also broken,
but the damage to the machine was not serious. While the
tests had shown nothing as to whether the power of the motor
was sufficient to keep the machine up, since the landing was
made many feet below the starting point, the experiment had
demonstrated that the method adopted for launching the machine
was a safe and practical one. On the whole, we were much
pleased.

Two days were consumed in making repairs, and the machine was
not ready again till late in the afternoon of the 16th. While
we had it out on the track in front of the building, making
the final adjustments, a stranger came along. After looking
at the machine a few seconds he inquired what it was. When we
told him it was a flying-machine he asked whether we intended
to fly it. We said we did, as soon as we had a suitable wind.
He looked at it several minutes longer and then, wishing to be
courteous, remarked that it looked as if it would fly, if it
had a “suitable wind.” We were much amused, for, no doubt, he
had in mind the recent 75-mile gale when he repeated our words,
“a suitable wind”!

During the night of December 16th a strong cold wind blew
from the north. When we arose on the morning of the 17th,
the puddles of water, which had been standing about the camp
since the recent rains, were covered with ice. The wind had
a velocity of 10 to 12 meters per second (22 to 27 miles an
hour). We thought it would die down before long, and so
remained indoors the early part of the morning. But when ten
o’clock arrived, and the wind was as brisk as ever, we decided
that we had better get the machine out and attempt a flight.
We hung out the signal for the men of the Life Saving Station.
We thought that by facing the flyer into a strong wind, there
ought to be no trouble in launching it from the level ground
about camp. We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a
wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be
partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.

We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one
hundred feet west of the new building. The biting cold wind
made work difficult, and we had to warm up frequently in our
living room, where we had a good fire in an improvised stove
made of a large carbide can. By the time all was ready, J. T.
Daniels, W. S. Dough and A. D. Etheridge, members of the Kill
Devil Life-Saving Station; W. C. Brinkley of Manteo; and Johnny
Moore, a boy from Nag’s Head, had arrived.

We had a “Richard” hand anemometer with which we measured the
velocity of the wind. Measurements made just before starting
the first flight showed velocities of 11 to 12 meters per
second, or 24 to 27 miles per hour. Measurements made just
before the last flight gave between 9 and 10 meters per second.
One made just afterward showed a little over 8 meters. The
records of the Government Weather Bureau at Kitty Hawk gave the
velocity of the wind between the hours of 10:30 and 12 o’clock,
the time during which the four flights were made, as averaging
27 miles at the time of the first flight and 24 miles at the
time of the last.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands
of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think
today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a
twenty-seven-mile wind, even if I knew that the machine
had already been flown and was safe. After these years
of experience, I look with amazement upon our audacity in
attempting flights with a new and untried machine under such
circumstances. Yet faith in our calculations and the design
of the first machine, based upon our tables of air pressures,
obtained by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence
in our system of control developed by three years of actual
experiences in balancing gliders in the air, had convinced us
that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining itself
in the air, and that, with a little practice, it could be
safely flown.

Wilbur having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the
14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After
running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released
the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine
started forward into the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the
machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike
the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a
27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with
it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of
the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture
just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had
risen to a height of about two feet.[4] The slow forward speed
of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture
by Wilbur’s attitude. He stayed along beside the machine
without any effort.

The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic,
partly due to the irregularity of the air and partly to lack
of experience in handling this machine. The control of the
front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too
near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when
started, so that it turned too far on one side and then too
far on the other. As a result, the machine would rise suddenly
to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A
sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of
the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which
it rose into the air, ended the flight. As the velocity of the
wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine
over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the
speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per
second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight
of 540 feet made in calm air.

This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the
first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying
a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full
flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had
finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.

With the assistance of our visitors we carried the machine
back to the track and prepared for another flight. The wind,
however, had chilled us all through, so that before attempting
a second flight, we all went to the building again to warm up.
Johnny Moore, seeing under the table a box filled with eggs,
asked one of the Station men where we got so many of them. The
people of the neighborhood eke out a bare existence by catching
fish during the short fishing season, and their supplies of
other articles of food are limited. He probably never had seen
so many eggs at one time in his whole life.

The one addressed jokingly asked him whether he hadn’t noticed
the small hen running about the outside of the building. “That
chicken lays eight to ten eggs a day!” Moore, having just seen
a piece of machinery lift itself from the ground and fly,
a thing at that time considered as impossible as perpetual
motion, was ready to believe nearly anything. But after going
out and having a good look at the wonderful fowl, he returned
with the remark, “It’s only a common-looking chicken!”

At twenty minutes after eleven Wilbur started on the second
flight. The course of this flight was much like that of the
first, very much up and down. The speed over the ground was
somewhat faster than that of the first flight, due to the
lesser wind. The duration of the flight was less than a second
longer than the first, but the distance covered was about
seventy-five feet greater.

Twenty minutes later, the third flight started. This one was
steadier than the first one an hour before. I was proceeding
along pretty well when a sudden gust from the right lifted the
machine up twelve to fifteen feet and turned it up sidewise in
an alarming manner. It began a lively sidling off to the left.
I warped the wings to try to recover the lateral balance and
at the same time pointed the machine down to reach the ground
as quickly as possible. The lateral control was more effective
than I had imagined and before I reached the ground the right
wing was lower than the left and struck first. The time of this
flight was fifteen seconds and the distance over the ground a
little over 200 feet.

Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just 12 o’clock.
The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by
the time three hundred feet had been covered, the machine was
under much better control. The course for the next four or five
hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about
eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in
one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over
the ground was measured and found to be 852 feet; the time of
the flight 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder
was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not
injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in
condition for flight again in a day or two.

While we were standing about discussing this last flight, a
sudden strong gust of wind struck the machine and began to turn
it over. Everybody made a rush for it. Wilbur, who was at one
end, seized it in front. Mr. Daniels and I, who were behind,
tried to stop it by holding to the rear uprights.

All our efforts were in vain. The machine rolled over and over.
Daniels, who had retained his grip, was carried along with it,
and was thrown about, head over heels, inside of the machine.
Fortunately he was not seriously injured, though badly bruised
in falling about against the motor, chain guides, etc. The ribs
in the surfaces of the machine were broken, the motor injured
and the chain guides badly bent, so that all possibility of
further flights with it for that year were at an end.

It is unlikely that any of the five spectators who had seen these flights sensed their scientific importance. But some of them felt interested, from one point of view, because they would have the laugh on a number of natives thereabouts who had insisted that these Wright brothers must be a pair of harmless cranks. A common argument had been: “God didn’t intend man to fly. If he did, he would have given him a set of wings.”

It was the regret of his life to the Wrights’ friend, “Bill” Tate, that he missed witnessing that first flight. He had decided that “no one but a crazy man would attempt to fly in such a wind,” and made no effort to be there.

After preparing and eating their lunch, and then washing their dishes, Wilbur and Orville set out, about two o’clock that afternoon, to walk over to the Kitty Hawk weather station, four or five miles away, to send a telegram to their father. It must have been about three o’clock when they reached the station. So few telegrams were sent from this locality that no regular commercial office existed and it was permitted to send them over this government wire as far as Norfolk where they would be relayed by phone from the weather bureau to the office of one of the telegraph companies.

Orville wrote out the following message to their father: “Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one-mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty-one miles longest 59 seconds inform press home Christmas. Orville Wright.”

What Orville meant when he wrote “against twenty-one-mile wind” was that the wind was at least twenty-one miles an hour during each of the flights. At the time of the first flight it was, as already noted, between twenty-four and twenty-seven miles an hour--probably about twenty-six miles.

After handing the message to Joseph J. Dosher, the weather bureau operator, Orville joined Wilbur over in a corner of the room to examine the record on an instrument that recorded the wind velocity.

Dosher got an almost instantaneous connection with Norfolk, and while the Wrights were still looking at the wind record, he said:

“The operator in Norfolk wants to know if it is all right to give the news to a reporter friend.”

But the Wrights replied: Absolutely no! They preferred to have the first news of the event come from Dayton.

Dosher clicked out the refusal.

The operator at Norfolk, however, did not heed the warning.

When they left the weather bureau after sending their message, the Wrights went over to the Kitty Hawk life-saving station, a few steps away, and chatted with members of the crew there. Captain S. J. Payne, in charge of the station, declared that he had seen one of the flights with the aid of a pair of binoculars.

Then the Wrights walked to the post office at Kitty Hawk; and before returning to camp they stopped for a farewell visit at the home of Captain Hobbs, who had often done hauling and other work for them.

Meanwhile, the telegraph operator at Norfolk, disregarding the Wrights’ adverse response to his request, had promptly gone ahead and given a tip about the flights to a young friend, H. P. Moore, of the Norfolk _Virginian-Pilot_. Moore was connected with the circulation department of the paper but was breaking in as a reporter and was in the habit of calling at the weather bureau. He made a desperate effort to reach by telephone over the government line someone at Kitty Hawk or elsewhere along the coast who could furnish details about what the flying-machine looked like, and about this Mr. Wright who was supposed to have operated it. Whatever information he got did not come from eyewitnesses of the flights, or from anyone who had ever seen the machine, and the account published the next morning was about ninety-nine per cent inaccurate. It described a flight of _three miles_ by Wilbur and told of Orville then running about yelling “Eureka.” The machine had one six-blade propeller beneath it, to elevate it, so the story ran, and another propeller at the rear to shove it forward.

“Very little can be learned here about the Wrights,” the story said. “They are supposed by the natives of Kitty Hawk to be people of means and are always well dressed.”

(When Moore met Orville, years later, and asked him what he thought of the account, Orville good-naturedly replied: “It was an amazing piece of work. Though ninety-nine per cent wrong, it did contain one fact that was correct. There _had_ been a flight.” Then Moore wrote that Orville had corroborated his story.)

One must give the _Virginian-Pilot_ editors credit for treating the news as important. The headline over the flight story the next morning extended clear across the top of the first page.

Moore sent brief “queries,” outlining the story, to twenty-one other newspapers over the country, including several in Ohio, one of them the Dayton _Journal_. But nearly all the telegraph editors resented having a correspondent suggest that a human being could fly by machinery. Of the twenty-one newspapers to whom it was offered, only five ordered the story. They were the New York _American_, the Washington (D.C.) _Post_, the Chicago _Record-Herald_, the Philadelphia _Record_, and the Cincinnati _Enquirer_. But not all five papers that received the story published it the next morning. The Chicago _Record-Herald_ and the Washington _Post_ delayed using it, and the Philadelphia _Record_ did not print it at all. Thus only three newspapers in the United States had a report of the great event at Kitty Hawk the next morning. The Cincinnati _Enquirer_ was the only one besides the _Virginian-Pilot_ that gave space to the account on the front page.

As the Associated Press is a co-operative news-gathering agency and the _Virginian-Pilot_ was a member, the story was available to the AP at Norfolk, but the AP was not yet interested in it.

One might have thought the news would especially interest the Dayton _Journal_; but Frank Tunison, the telegraph editor there (who also handled outgoing news for the Associated Press) was a man who took pride in not being easily fooled, and he paid no attention to the query from Norfolk.

Orville’s telegram to his father did not reach Dayton until 5:25 that evening. In transmission, errors had got into the message; fifty-nine seconds had become fifty-seven, and the sender’s name was spelled “Orevelle.”

Katharine Wright immediately sent a message to Octave Chanute that the “boys” had reported four successful flights. Bishop Wright asked his son Lorin to prepare a brief statement with a copy of the message and give it to the Associated Press. After he had finished his dinner, Lorin went to the office of the _Journal_ and inquired if the Associated Press representative was there. He was referred to Frank Tunison. Whether Tunison had already received the query from Moore at Norfolk is not certain. But he seemed annoyed over being expected to accept such a tale.

Without looking up from his work, he yawned and said to Lorin:

“Fifty-seven seconds, hey? If it had been fifty-seven minutes then it might have been a news item.”

Nothing about the Wrights’ feat appeared in the Dayton _Journal_ the next morning. But news considered important enough to be displayed on the first page of that same issue included items about a routine weekly meeting of the local united trades and labor council; a colored man named Charles Brown, who admitted pocketbook thefts; the pardoning of a robber from Joliet prison, in Illinois. On the page opposite the editorial page, the biggest, blackest headline was: “Stores Are Filled with Christmas Shoppers.”

Dayton afternoon papers on that December 18 did print accounts of the receipt of the telegram by Bishop Wright, as well as other “facts” about the flight. The Dayton _Herald_ article appeared to be a rehash of the dispatch from Norfolk in the Cincinnati _Enquirer_. Over the article in the Dayton _Daily News_, on an inside page, alongside of so-called “country correspondence” from near-by towns, the heading was: “Dayton Boys Emulate Great Santos-Dumont.” Santos-Dumont had flown in an airship, and now the Wrights had flown in something or other. Therefore the Wrights must be imitators of Alberto Santos-Dumont! Lacking scientific knowledge, the editors failed to distinguish between a flying-machine, heavier-than-air, and an airship consisting of a gas-bag equipped with a propeller. Indeed, from then on, nearly all who had heard of the reported flights, editors included, were in one or the other of two groups of disbelievers: (1) those who refused to believe the flights had taken place at all; and (2) those who thought that even if they had been made they were not of great importance.

The Associated Press, that had declined to accept news of the flights at either Norfolk or Dayton the day before, now sent out for afternoon papers on December 18, a brief report, less than 350 words, from Norfolk. This appeared to be simply a condensation of the article in the _Virginian-Pilot_ that morning and contained most of the same inaccuracies. Not more than two or three sentences in the AP dispatch were correct. “The machine flew for three miles,” the report said, “... and gracefully descended to the earth _at the spot selected_ by the man in the _navigator’s car_ as a suitable landing place.... Preparatory to its flight the machine was placed upon _a platform ... on a high sandhill_ and when all was in readiness the fastenings to the machine were released and it _started down an incline_. The navigator, Wilbur Wright, _then_ started a small gasoline engine which worked the propellers. When the end of the _incline_ was reached the machine gradually arose until it obtained [sic] an _altitude of 60 feet_.... _In_ the center is the navigator’s car and suspended _just below the bottom plan_ [sic] is a small gasoline engine, which furnishes the motive power for the propelling and elevating wheels.

“There are _two 6-blade propellers_,” the dispatch said, “one arranged just below the frame so as to exert an _upward force_ when in motion and the other extends horizontally from the rear to the center of the car furnishing forward impetus. Protruding from the center of the car is a _huge fan-shaped rudder of canvas_, stretched upon a frame of wood. This rudder is controlled by the navigator and may be moved to each side, raised or lowered.” Not all the Associated Press papers printed the brief dispatch in full; in fact, many did not use it at all.

With the first reports “confirmed” by the Associated Press, two papers, the Washington _Post_ and Chicago _Record-Herald_, that had withheld the story bought from Mr. Moore at Norfolk, finally printed the Moore dispatch on the morning of December 19. The Washington _Post_ even used it on the front page, but cautiously inserted qualifying phrases, saying “it is reported” that a flight was made. And the Chicago _Record-Herald_ on December 20 had an editorial about the flights, or about “the” flight. But as the editorial restated many of the inaccuracies contained in the news report, it only added to the general misinformation.

(A few newspaper editors are still touchy about the inadequate reporting of the Wrights’ first flights. As recently as January 29, 1941, the Chicago _Daily News_ had an editorial of nearly half a column defending the merit of the hopelessly inaccurate Associated Press dispatch from Norfolk on December 18, 1903. And shortly afterward, on February 12, 1941, in connection with a letter from a reader who sought to give the historic facts, the _Daily News_ editor, still unwilling to accept the truth, added a note insisting once again that there was “nothing fantastic” about that AP report from Norfolk!)

At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in St. Louis, December 28 to January 2, Octave Chanute made an address on the subject of Aerial Navigation in which he referred to the Wrights’ flights. But little was said about the Chanute speech in the newspapers.

(Chanute used that address as the basis for an article in the March, 1904, issue of _Popular Science Monthly_ in which he said: “Now that an initial success has been achieved with a flying-machine, we can discern some of the uses of such apparatus and also some of its limitations. Its first application will probably be military.” He said, too, that “it may even carry mails in special cases, but the useful loads carried will be very small. The machines will eventually be fast, they will be used in sport, but they are not to be thought of as commercial carriers.” He did not think it would ever be practical to carry loads “such as a store of explosives, or big guns to shoot them.”)

Almost as surprising as the lack of effort by the usually painstaking Associated Press to get the facts about the Kitty Hawk event, was the failure of the AP, or any other press association, or any newspaper, to rush a staff man to Dayton in an effort to obtain the whole amazing story of what the Wrights had done.

Desiring to correct the misinformation that had been printed, the Wrights prepared a statement about their recent flights, and gave this to the Associated Press with the request that it be published. This appeared, at least in part, in probably a majority of the Associated Press newspapers, on January 6; but the initiative, it should be noted, did not come from the press association, but from the Wrights themselves. A few editorial paragraphers made derisive comments on one sentence of the statement which suggested that “the day of flying had arrived.”

Exactly one month after the Kitty Hawk flights, on Sunday, January 17, the New York _Herald_, in its magazine section, had an article headed: The Machine That Flies. Despite the time that had elapsed, affording opportunity to get the facts, this article not only contained a mass of preposterous misstatements but even quoted Wilbur Wright for many of them. The article was accompanied by a drawing, an artist’s conception of the machine in flight, and a diagram, showing the two “six-bladed propellers,” one behind the machine and the other beneath it, to give it elevation!

VII

AFTER THE EVENT

The Wrights felt a glow of pride and satisfaction in having both invented and demonstrated the device that had baffled the ablest scientists through the centuries. But still they did not expect to make their fortunes. True, they had applied, on March 23, 1903, or nearly nine months before they flew, for basic patents (not issued until May 22, 1906), but that was by way of establishing an authentic record. Thus far they hadn’t even employed a patent lawyer.

Long afterward, Orville Wright was asked what he and Wilbur would have taken for all their secrets of aviation, for all patent rights _for the entire world_, if someone had come along to talk terms just after those first flights. He wasn’t sure, but he had an idea that if they had received an offer of ten thousand dollars they might have accepted it.

Since the airplane was not yet developed into a type for practical use, ten thousand dollars might have been considered a fair return for their time, effort, and outlay. They had had all the fun and satisfaction and their expenses had been surprisingly small. Their cash outlay for building and flying their power plane was less than $1,000, and that included their railroad fares to and from Kitty Hawk. Of course, the greater part of their expenses would have been for mechanical labor, much of which they did themselves. But skilled labor was low-priced at that time; one could hire a better than average mechanic for as little as $16 a week. Even if the Wrights had charged themselves with the cost of their own work, their total expenses on the power plane would still have been less than $2,000.

Many fanciful stories have been told about the sacrifices the Wright family made to enable the brothers to fly, and of how they were financed by this person or that. More than one man of wealth in Dayton has encouraged the belief that _he_ financed them. One persistent story is that they raised money for their experiments by the sale of an Iowa farm in which they had an interest. The truth is that this farm, which had been deeded by their father to the _four_ Wright brothers, was sold early in 1902 before Wilbur and Orville had even begun work on their power plane or spent much on their experiments. The sale was made at the request of their brother Reuchlin, and had no relation whatsoever to aviation. Nor is it true that the Wright home was mortgaged during the time of the brothers’ experiments. Another story was that their sister Katharine had furnished the money they needed out of her salary as school teacher. Katharine Wright was always amused over that tale, for she was never a hoarder of money nor a financier, and could hardly have provided funds even if this had been necessary. Any rumor that her brothers could have borrowed money from her, rather than lending money to her, as they sometimes did, was almost as funny to Katharine as another report--that her brothers had relied on her for mathematical assistance in their calculations.

The simple fact is that no one ever financed the Wrights’ work except Wilbur and Orville themselves. Their bicycle business had been giving them a decent income and at the end of the year 1903 they still had a few thousand dollars’ savings in a local building and loan association. Whatever financial scrimping was necessary came _after_ they had flown; after they knew they had made a great discovery.

But the Wrights’ belief that they had achieved something of great importance was not bolstered by the attitude of the general public. Not only were there no receptions, brass bands, or parades in their honor, but most people paid less attention to the history-making feat than if the “boys” had simply been on vacation and caught a big fish, or shot a bear.

Before the flights, some of the neighbors had been puzzled by reports that the Wrights were working on a flying-machine. One man in business near the Wright shop had become acquainted with an inventor who thought he was about to perfect a perpetual motion machine; and this businessman promptly sent the inventor to the Wrights, assuming that he would find them kindred spirits. John G. Feight, living next door to the Wright home, had remarked, just before the brothers went to Kitty Hawk: “Flying and perpetual motion will come at the same time.”

Now that flights had been made, neighbors didn’t doubt the truth of the reports--though one of them had his own explanation. Mr. Webbert, father of the man from whom the Wrights rented their shop, said:

“I have known those boys ever since they were small children, and if they say they flew I know they did; but I think there must be special conditions down in North Carolina that would enable them to fly by the power of a motor. There is only one thing that could lift a machine like that in _this_ part of the country--spirit power.” Webbert was a spiritualist. He had seen tables and pianos lifted at séances!

But even if the boys _had_ flown, what of it? Men were flying in Europe, weren’t they? Hadn’t Santos-Dumont flown some kind of self-propelled balloon?

The one person who had almost unbounded enthusiasm for what the brothers had accomplished was their father. They found it difficult to keep a complete file of the photographs they had made showing different phases of their experiments, because the moment their father’s eye fell on one of these pictures he would pick it up and mail it to some relative along with a letter telling with pride what the boys had done.

Two brothers in Boston sensed, however, that, if the scant reports about the Kitty Hawk event were based on truth, then something of great significance had happened. These men were Samuel and Godfrey Lowell Cabot, wealthy and influential members of a famous family. Both of them, particularly Samuel, had long been interested in whatever progress was being made in aeronautics. On December 19, the day after the first news of the flights was published, Samuel Cabot sent to the Wrights a telegram of congratulations. Two days later, his brother Godfrey wrote them a letter. In that letter Godfrey Cabot wanted to know if they thought their machine could be used for carrying freight. He was financially interested in an industrial operation in West Virginia, he said, where conditions would justify a rate of $10 a ton for transporting goods by air only sixteen miles.

One reason why nearly everyone in the United States was disinclined to swallow the reports about flying with a machine heavier than air was that important scientists had already explained in the public prints why the thing was impossible. When a man of the profound scientific wisdom of Simon Newcomb, for example, had demonstrated with unassailable logic why man couldn’t fly, why should the public be fooled by silly stories about two obscure bicycle repair-men who hadn’t even been to college? Professor Newcomb was so distinguished an astronomer that he was the only American since Benjamin Franklin to be made an associate of the Institute of France. It was widely assumed that what he didn’t know about laws of physics simply wasn’t in books; and that when he said flying couldn’t be done, there was no need to inquire any further. More than once Professor Newcomb had written that flight without gas-bags would require the discovery of some new metal or a new unsuspected force in Nature. Then, in an article in _The Independent_--October 22, 1903, while the Wrights were at Kitty Hawk assembling their power machine--he not only proved that trying to fly was nonsense, but went further and showed that even if a man did fly, he wouldn’t dare to stop. “Once he slackens his speed, down he begins to fall.--Once he stops, he falls a dead mass. How shall he reach the ground without destroying his delicate machinery? I do not think that even the most imaginative inventor has yet put on paper a demonstrative, successful way of meeting this difficulty.”

In all his statements, Professor Newcomb had the support of other eminent authorities, including Rear Admiral George W. Melville, then chief engineer for the United States Navy, who, a year or two previously, in the _North American Review_, had set forth convincingly the absurdity of attempts to fly.

The most recent Newcomb article was all the more impressive as a forecast from the fact that it appeared only fifteen days after one of Professor Langley’s unsuccessful attempts at flight. That is, Langley’s attempt seemed to show that flight was beyond human possibility, and then Newcomb’s article explained _why_ it was impossible. Though these pooh-poohing statements by Newcomb and other scientists were probably read by relatively few people, they were seen by editors, editorial writers, and others who could have much influence on public opinion. Naturally, no editor who “knew” a thing couldn’t be done would permit his paper to record the fact that it had been done.

Oddly enough, one of the first public announcements by word of mouth about the Wrights’ Kitty Hawk flights was in a Sunday-school. A. I. Root, founder of a still prosperous business for the sale of honey and beekeepers’ supplies at Medina, Ohio, taught a Sunday-school class. One morning shortly before the dismissal bell, observing that the boys in the class were restless, he sought to restore order by catching their interest. Perhaps he wished to show, too, that miracles as wonderful as any in the Bible were still possible.

“Do you know, friends,” he said, “that two Ohio boys, or young men rather, have outstripped the world in demonstrating that a flying-machine can be constructed without the aid of a balloon?” He had read a brief item about the Wrights in an Akron paper.

The class became attentive and Root went on: “During the past two months these two boys have made a machine that actually flew through the air for more than half a mile, carrying one of the boys with it. This young man is not only a credit to our state but to the whole country and to the world.”

Though this was several weeks after the Wrights had first flown, no one in the class had ever heard about it, and incredulously they fired questions at the teacher.

“Where do the boys live? What are their names? When and where did their machine fly?”

Root described, not too accurately, the Kitty Hawk flights, and added: “When they make their next trial I am going to try to be on hand to see the experiment.”

An important part of Root’s business was publication of the still widely circulated magazine, _Gleanings in Bee Culture_, and in his issue of March 1, 1904, he told of the episode in the Sunday-school. By printing that story, the Medina bee man may possibly have been the first editor of a scientific publication in the United States to report that man could fly. (The _Popular Science Monthly_ in its issue of March, 1904, had an article by Octave Chanute in which the flights were mentioned.) Root a little later even predicted: “Possibly we may be able to fly over the North Pole.”

The Wrights were more amused than disturbed by the lack of general recognition that flying was now possible. They inwardly chuckled when they heard people still using the old expression: “Why, a person could no more do _that_ than he could fly!” But they knew they had only begun to learn about handling a flying-machine.

VIII

EXPERIMENTS OF 1904-’05

In all their work on their power plane the Wrights’ main incentive had been to gain the distinction of being the first of mankind to fly. They had not designed the machine for practical use. Now, however, even though they did not yet foresee many of the uses for which the airplane was destined, they began to think it could be developed into a machine useful for scouting in warfare, for carrying mail to isolated places, for exploration; and that it would appeal to those who could afford it for sport.

If their machine was capable, as they had demonstrated, of flying by its own power for 852 feet against a 20-mile wind, there was no reason why it shouldn’t go many times that far. But if the machine was to be practical, many improvements would be necessary, and they would need more experience in flying. Much practice would be required, and that would mean more expense in proportion to income, for they would have less time for building and repairing bicycles. But they decided to devote to aviation whatever amount of time seemed necessary. A number of bicycles at their shop were in various stages of completion. But no new ones were started after the Wrights’ return from Kitty Hawk, though some of those on hand were completed and sold. The brothers now began to turn over to Charlie Taylor, their chief mechanic, most of the routine work of the shop.

In January, 1904, the brothers began building a new plane. It was similar to the one flown at Kitty Hawk, but there were a number of changes, including more sturdy construction throughout. The weight exceeded that of the original plane by about eighty pounds. (In flight, the weight, including the pilot, and 70 pounds of iron bars carried on the framework under the front elevator, was 900 pounds.[5]) The wing camber was changed from 1-20 to 1-25--that is, the curvature was decreased; and the ribs were tapered from front to rear spar instead of being of uniform depth, as in the earlier model. An entirely new engine went into the 1904 machine. In fact, the Wrights started to build three new engines. One of these had four cylinders of 4⅛-inch bore; another, four cylinders of only 4-inch bore, as the one used at Kitty Hawk; and the third was a V-type, of eight cylinders. The 4⅛-inch bore was the one installed in the 1904 plane and gave a satisfactory amount of power--but not so much as the Wrights later developed in the other four-cylinder motor of only four-inch bore. That motor they kept in their shop and used for a kind of guinea pig, trying various improvements and refinements until it produced as much power as they had expected from the V-type motor of eight cylinders and twice as much as the original motor used at Kitty Hawk. They then gave up the idea of completing the V-type motor.

Another change in the 1904 machine was using white pine instead of spruce for the front and rear spars in the wings. Spruce was not available in Dayton at that time, and tests the Wrights made at their shop, in the manner usually employed for ascertaining the strength of woods, indicated that the two woods were about equally strong. (But in actual use, when stresses came suddenly, as in landing, the white pine spars snapped “like taffy under a hammer blow,” though spruce had always withstood such shocks. The brothers rebuilt the wings, with all spars of spruce.)

To obtain practice, their first need was a suitable field, not too far from home. They found a cow pasture, fairly level, handy to an interurban railway, at Simms Station, eight miles from Dayton, toward Springfield. This field, often called the Huffman prairie, was part of a farm belonging to a Dayton bank president, Torrence Huffman. Compared with a modern flying-field the area of sixty-eight acres they wanted to use was not quite ideal. It contained a number of trees, besides being near power wires and poles. But it was as good as they could find and without delay the Wrights introduced themselves to Mr. Huffman to ask if they might rent his pasture for their experiments. He granted the request and told them they were welcome to use the field free of charge. But he said he hoped they would drive his cows to a safe place and not run over them.

By April 15, 1904, the Wrights had built a rough wooden shed at the Huffman pasture, in preparation for their experiments.