Chapter L: M. Wainwright, president of the Diamond Chain Company, of (2)

Even if they had tried, the Wrights could hardly have kept secret what they were doing here at the Huffman prairie, with an interurban car line and two highways passing the field they were using. But they took special precautions against being thought secretive, for they knew that the best way to avoid being bothered by newspaper people or others was to make no mystery of what they were doing. Before they had attempted even one trial flight at the Huffman pasture they wrote letters to each of the Dayton papers, as well as to each of the Cincinnati papers, that on May 23 they would attempt to fly and would be glad to have any newspaper representative who felt interested come and watch them. Their only request was that no pictures be taken, and that the reports should not be sensational. This latter stipulation was to avoid attracting crowds, but as it turned out there was no need to be concerned about curiosity-seekers.

About a dozen newspapermen showed up. Also on hand were a number of friends and neighbors of the Wright family. Altogether perhaps thirty-five persons were present--all by invitation.

The Wrights dragged their machine out of the shed to wait for a suitable wind before launching the machine from the short stretch of wooden track. As it happened, the wind was unusually high that day, about twenty-five miles an hour, and the Wrights said they would wait for it to die down a little. When the high wind did cease, it went suddenly to an almost complete calm, and a wind of at least eleven miles an hour was needed to take off from so short a track. The Wrights said they would try a flight if the wind picked up. But the wind failed to do so. The crowd waited and two or three of the reporters--too experienced to be easily fooled--began to make comments to one another. They hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. Why had they been asked to waste time on such an assignment? Most of the guests, though, had only sympathy for the brothers. They actually seemed sincere in thinking they _could_ fly.

Though sorry to disappoint the spectators, the Wrights showed no signs of embarrassment. They had learned to take events as they came. Finally, after the day had dragged on with no sign of a more favorable wind, one of the brothers announced:

“We can’t fly today; but since you’ve taken the trouble to come and wait so long, we’ll let the machine skim along the track and you’ll get an idea of what it’s supposed to do. With so short a track, we may not get off the ground, but you’ll see how it operates.”

Then the engine misbehaved. It worked all right in the warming-up period, but began to skip explosions as soon as the machine started down the track. This was caused, the Wrights soon learned, by the flow of air over the mouth of the intake pipe--a trouble never experienced with the engine used at Kitty Hawk.

After running the length of the track, the machine slid off the end without rising into the air at all. That wasn’t much of a story for the reporters. Their assumption that they had been sent on a wild goose chase seemed to be confirmed. Would there be a flight the next day? The Wrights couldn’t be sure. First of all they must find out what ailed that engine. They might be able to do that overnight, or it might take longer. However, all who wished to return the next day would be welcome. Indeed, the Wrights said, any newspaper representative would be welcome at _any_ time.

Two or three of the newspapermen did return the next day. The engine still sulked, but the wind was a bit more favorable and the Wrights decided to show the reporters what they could. This time the machine rose five or six feet from the ground and went through the air for nearly sixty feet before it came down. An electric contact point in one of the engine cylinders had worked loose, and only three cylinders were hitting. The few reporters present, though now convinced that the age of flying had not yet come, wrote friendly articles and made the most of what they had seen. The versions differed widely. One report had the machine rising to a height of seventy-five feet. In the Cincinnati _Enquirer_ account was a comment that the machine “is more substantially constructed _than other machines of its kind_.”

None of those newspapermen ever returned. During all their experiments that year and the next, the Wrights had about all the privacy they needed. They used to smile over a comment by Octave Chanute: “It is a marvel to me that the newspapers haven’t spotted you.”

Having disposed of the reporters, the inventors resumed their work.

Almost as soon as the new trials began, the brothers encountered a new difficulty. A track 60 feet long had been adequate for launching the machine in the wind at Kitty Hawk; but a track of 160 feet, or even one of 240 feet, was not long enough for use at Huffman field where the winds were usually light.

The Huffman field was covered with hummocks from six inches to a foot high. Only a few spots free from hummocks were suitable for a 240-foot track. And landing wheels, such as were used later, would have been impractical on that uneven ground. Laying 240 feet of track, after finding enough ground space free from hummocks, was a considerable job. But frequently, after the track was laid, the wind would change its direction, and then all the work had to be done over. After a few times, the brothers gave up trying to use so long a track, and ordinarily used one of only 160 feet.

As steady winds of eleven miles an hour, the least that would do for starting from a 160-foot track, were not frequent, the Wrights had to be in readiness to take advantage of occasional gusts of strong wind. With their machine on the track, they waited until they could “see” a flurry of wind coming--that is, until they could see weeds being agitated by the wind in the distance. Then they would start the motor and run the machine down the track to meet the wind gust when it reached the end of the rail. In that way they sometimes succeeded in making a start on a day generally calm. But one such start ended disastrously, and Orville, who was piloting the machine, had one of his narrowest escapes. When the machine first met the flurry of wind, it rose rapidly, but a second later it was on the ground with the wings pointing vertically into the air. It had dived at a steep angle, throwing Orville forward to the ground. The upper wing spar came down across the middle of his back. But luckily, a section about two feet wide, just wide enough to miss hitting him, was broken out. No other damage was done to the spar, and the Wrights could never account for the seemingly miraculous breakage that provided a space for safety over the very place where Orville lay on the ground. After that accident, Charlie Taylor, who had seen other narrow escapes, gloomily told the neighbors across the road that every time he saw one of the brothers start on a flight he felt that he was seeing him alive for the last time.

Early in July the Wrights made alterations in the machine which located the center of gravity farther toward the rear than it had been before. In the first trial after those alterations, the machine, after leaving the track, kept turning up more and more and looked as if it were going to loop the loop. The center of gravity was so far back that the front elevator, even when turned to its limit, could not check the upward turn. While pointing vertically upward, the machine came to a stop and then began to slide backward. By the time it reached the ground it was once more so nearly level that if the skids had had a slight upward bend at their rear ends, the landing might have been made without damage. As it was, the rear ends of the skids dug into the ground; but the damage was slight.

Before their experiments had progressed far in 1904 the Wrights saw that a better method of launching the machine was needed. They decided that a derrick with a falling weight would be the simplest and cheapest device. A 1,600-pound weight, falling a distance of 16½ feet, was so geared with ropes and pulleys that it produced a 350-pound pull on the machine through a distance of 49½ feet. By this arrangement the machine could be put into the air after a run of only 50 feet, even in a dead calm. Shifting the track was now seldom necessary.

Up to the time the derrick catapult was ready for its first trial on September 7, less than forty starts had been made and many of them failed for lack of speed. But now the length of the flights increased rapidly. The shorter flights had been in almost a straight line, but as the lengths of the flights increased it was necessary to make turns to stay within the field. Then a new trouble--or rather an old one that supposedly had been overcome at Kitty Hawk--began to bother the Wrights. Often in making a short turn they suddenly found themselves in a tail-spin which ended in a crash requiring days, or even weeks, for repairs. They soon learned what it was in making the turn that caused the tail-spin; but they found it difficult to avoid, because they had no way of knowing at what angle the air was striking the machine. This led to the “invention” of the first instrument for guidance of a pilot in flying. They simply attached a short piece of string to the crossbar beneath the front elevator. When the machine traveled directly forward the string trailed straight backward; but when the machine slipped to either side the string blew to one side or the other and indicated approximately the amount of the side slip. By close observance of this string it was possible to avoid entirely the danger of tail-spins, but the pilot learning to fly had so many things to attend to, so it seemed to him, that he sometimes neglected to watch the string closely enough.

After it was found that the derrick permitted the plane to be launched at any time, the Wrights often let the machine stand on the track during the day with the weights raised, ready to start at a moment’s notice. One day in early November, while idly strolling in front of the track, Orville thought he saw a slight movement of the plane on the track. A more careful look did not confirm his first impression; nevertheless he turned and leisurely walked towards the plane. When within a few steps of it he saw that it actually _was_ in motion. The wire that held it against the pull of the 1,600-pound weight was attached to a stake driven into the soft ground several feet. That stake was slowly coming out of the ground! By leaping upon one of the skids, Orville reached the elevator control lever in time to prevent the machine from rising as it rushed down the track. A strained shoulder was the principal damage, though the machine suffered a few slight breakages.

Not until the 51st flight in 1904, when the machine stayed in the air one minute and one second, did the Wrights beat their best Kitty Hawk record of 59 seconds. The first complete circle was not made until September 20. But toward the end of the 1904 experiments, there were two five-minute flights. In each of these the machine circled the field four or five times without stopping.

The total flying time during 1904 was only 45 minutes. But the knowledge and experience gained from that three quarters of an hour were of almost inestimable importance.

Toward the end of May, 1905, the Wrights began assembling a machine all new with the exception of the motor and the propeller-driving mechanism. Strengthening of the structure at places where the previous machine had been too weak in making landings added about 25 pounds more weight. The principal changes, however, were in wing design, addition of some new features not in the earlier machines, and in making the wing-warping and operation of the tail rudder independent of each other. The camber of the wings was changed from 1-25, used in 1904, back to 1-20 as used in 1903 at Kitty Hawk. This change was to enable the machine to get off at a slower speed.

The most radical change was the addition of two semi-circular vanes, called “blinkers,” between the two surfaces of the front elevator. This device was later patented by the Wrights. The purpose of the “blinkers” was to assist the rear rudder in overcoming the unequal resistances of the two wings when they were warped while making a turn. Gliding experiments in 1902 had shown that the pressure on a fixed vane in the rear of the wings tended to speed the higher wing when the machine slipped in the direction of the lower wing, and caused a tail-spin. The vane had to be made movable to relieve this pressure. It now occurred to the Wrights that if a fixed vane were placed in front of the wings, instead of behind them, its effect would be the reverse of that when the vane was in the rear, and that there would be less need of operating the rear rudder to overcome the unbalanced resistance of the two wings. Moreover, when the machine slipped inward while “banking” a turn, the speed of the low wing would be increased and a tail-spin avoided. The operation of the rear rudder could now be made independent of the wing-warp without danger.

It was found that the “blinkers” entirely removed the danger of tail spinning but that they added to the difficulty of steering, both when flying straight and when making turns. Consequently they were not used in all the flights. (In modern planes the effect of the “blinkers” is gained by extending the fuselage far out in front of the wings.)

Though tail-spins could be avoided without use of “blinkers,” by carefully observing the little piece of string that indicated side slip, yet they sometimes occurred. In one flight, in September, 1905, when the “blinkers” were not on the machine, Orville suddenly discovered he was in a tail-spin and that he was about to come down in the top of a forty-foot thorn tree. The thorns were several inches long, and the idea of falling through them to the ground was not alluring. Orville quickly turned the machine into an almost vertical dive while turning in a circle 50 to 100 feet in diameter. The inner wing of the machine hit a branch of the tree, imbedding a thorn in an upright, and tore off the branch. In the dive, the higher wing, because of much greater speed, soon passed the lower wing in the downward plunge and itself became the low wing. The machine thus was in a steep bank with the high side toward the tree, just the opposite from what it had been before. When Orville turned the elevator to avoid striking the ground, the machine turned suddenly and unexpectedly away from the tree, because, in this steeply banked condition, the elevator exerted more pressure laterally than it did vertically. (When an aeroplane is banked to 45 degrees the elevator serves just as much for a rudder as for an elevator, and the rudder just as much for an elevator as for a rudder.) Though the machine lightly touched the ground, Orville flew it on back to the hangar, where the branch of the tree was found still clinging to the upright. It had been the practice of the Wrights to dive the machine to recover speed in a stall; but this quick recovery was from an entirely different cause--the great difference in the speeds of the two wings.

An amusing flight by Orville in 1905 was made after some weeks of inactivity in flying and after the machine had undergone a number of changes since his last flight. When the machine left the starting rail it began pitching like a bucking broncho. Orville wanted to stop, but at every plunge the plane came down so steeply he did not dare attempt a landing. As soon as he got control of the machine, after going three or four hundred feet, he did land safely. Wilbur rushed up to inquire why he had stopped just when he had really got going. Orville explained that he would have landed even sooner, but had taken the first opportunity to stop without smashing the machine to pieces.

Though the rudder and wing-warp were entirely independent of each other in all the flights of 1905, the Wrights several years later resumed having the two controls interconnected, to operate together, but with an arrangement needed for modifying their relationship when making turns.

Another change that improved control of the 1905 machine was in giving the wings considerably less angle at the tips than in the central part. By this arrangement, the tips stalled later than other parts of the wings and some lateral control remained even after the central part of the wings were in a stalled condition.

After the Wrights had made the blades of their propellers much wider and thinner than the original ones, they discovered that the performance of the propellers in flight did not agree closely with their calculations, as in the earlier propellers. They could see only one reason for this, and that was that the propeller blades twisted from their normal shape under pressure in flight. To find out quickly if this was the real reason, they fastened to each blade a small surface, like an elevator, out behind the blades, set at an angle to balance the pressures that were distorting the blades. They called the surfaces “little jokers.” When they found that the “little jokers” cured the trouble, they dispensed with them and began to give the blades a backward sweep, which served the same purpose.

In the flying season of 1905, the control of the machine was much improved by increasing the area of the front rudder from 50 to 85 square feet, and by moving it to nearly twice the distance from the wings. This added distance made response to the movement of the rudder slower, and control of the machine much easier.

The lateral control also was improved by enlarging the rear rudder from 20 to 34 square feet, and by moving it to a position three feet farther back of the wings.

On account of frequent rains, the soggy condition of the field, and other weather conditions, only nine attempts to fly were made in the first two months of experiments in 1905, and only three of these lasted for as much as ten seconds. But after the first of September progress was rapid.

During all this time, the newspapers had continued to let the Wrights alone. Indeed, the failure of the newspapers in Dayton and elsewhere to say much about the history-making experiments at Huffman field was often used as an argument to prove that there couldn’t be any truth in the rumors that men had actually contrived a successful flying-machine. “You couldn’t have kept a thing like that _secret_. Some reporter surely would have _heard_ about it!”

Dan Kumler, who was city editor of James M. Cox’s _Daily News_, in Dayton, during those early years of flying, recalled in 1940, not long before his death, that many people who had been on interurban cars passing the Huffman field and seen the Wrights in the air used to come to the _Daily News_ office to inquire why there was nothing in the paper about the flights.

“Such callers,” said Kumler, “got to be a nuisance.”

“And why wasn’t there anything in the paper?” Kumler was asked.

“We just didn’t believe it,” he said. “Of course you remember that the Wrights at that time were terribly secretive.”

“You mean they were secretive about the fact that they were flying over an open field?”

“I guess,” said Kumler, grinning, after a moment’s reflection, “the truth is that we were just plain dumb.”

James M. Cox, owner of the _Daily News_, has likewise confessed that “none of us believed the reports” of flights.

One fact that kept the earlier flights relatively inconspicuous was that much of the time the plane was within 10 or 15 feet of the ground. Only occasionally was it up as high as 50 feet. There were no flights beyond the field itself, because if necessary to make a forced landing elsewhere, dragging the machine back to its shed might not have been easy.

The Wrights had aimed at first to avoid being in the air when an interurban car was passing. But that precaution soon proved to be unnecessary. Few people ever paid any attention to the flights. One day, though, the general manager of the interurban line was on a passing car when the plane was in the air and he ordered the car stopped. He and the chief engineer of the line, who was with him, got off and stayed a while to look at the incredible sight.

Across the Springfield pike from the field lived the Beard family, tenants on the Torrence Huffman farm. Whenever the plane landed abruptly Mrs. Beard was likely to dash across the road with a bottle of arnica, feeling sure it would be needed, as sometimes it was. But there were few other visitors.

Two somewhat mysterious visitors did come, however. The Wrights saw two men wandering about near-by fields during most of one day and thought they must be hunters, though there was not much game thereabouts. Again the next day the two strangers were seen, and finally they came across the field to where the Wrights were adjusting their machine. One of them carried a camera. They asked if visitors were permitted.

“Yes, only we’d rather you didn’t take any pictures,” one of the brothers courteously replied.

The man with the camera set it down off to one side, twenty feet away, as if to make it plain that he was not trying to sneak any shots. Then he inquired if it was all right to look into the shed. The brothers told him to make himself right at home. Was he a newspaperman? No, he said, he was not a newspaperman, though he sometimes did writing for publication. That was as near as he came to introducing himself. After the callers had gone, Charlie Taylor, the Wrights’ mechanic, said: “That fellow’s no writer. At least he’s no ordinary writer. When he looked at the different parts of the machine he called them all by their right names.”

Later the Wrights learned the identity of the visitor. Orville chanced to see a picture of him in a New York newspaper. His identity was confirmed some time afterward when he and Orville were formally introduced to each other--though neither referred to their previous meeting. The man had been chief engineer for Professor Langley of the Smithsonian Institution.

Toward the end of September, the Wrights were able greatly to increase their distances. On September 26, there was an uninterrupted flight of 11⅛ miles in 18 minutes and 9 seconds; and on September 29, one of 12 miles in 19 minutes 55 seconds. Then, on October 3, there was a new record of 15¼ miles in 25 minutes 5 seconds; another, on October 4, of 20¾ miles in 33 minutes 17 seconds; and finally, on October 5, 24⅕ miles in 38 minutes 3 seconds.

The flights of October 3 and 4 would have been longer except that certain bearings had become overheated. By October 5 the inventors had added more grease cups where needed and also installed a larger gas tank. But the tank was not full when that final test began and the flight ended because the fuel was exhausted. It was the intention of the Wrights to make one more test and put the record at more than an hour; but now for the first time the miracle of flight actually began to attract more spectators and the brothers decided it might be prudent to quit for the season before details of the machine’s construction became public knowledge. However, there was one more short flight--just one circle of the field--on October 16.

After the close of the 1905 experiments, a test of the engine showed that it produced more power than when first put into use. This gain was attributed to the increased smoothness of the cylinders and pistons produced by wear.

Looking back over their experiments, the Wrights noted that “in 1903, 62 pounds per horsepower were carried at a speed of 30 miles an hour; in 1904, 53 pounds at 34 miles an hour; and in 1905, 46 pounds at 38 miles an hour.” Thus the weight carried per horsepower was in inverse ratio to the speed--the smaller the weight carried per horsepower, the higher the speed. That seems obvious enough now, but at the time the Wrights were making these experiments many scientists still accepted the “Langley Law,” that the greater the speed, the less horsepower necessary.

The Wrights now knew that the airplane would have practical use--though they did not foresee how safely trans-Atlantic flights would be made--and not even in their wildest dreams did they think of anyone ever flying at night.

IX

IT STILL WASN’T “NEWS”

Though Dayton newspapermen had not besieged the Huffman pasture for details of the great news story lurking there during 1904-’05, one of their number had occasionally been in contact with the Wrights. That was Luther Beard--no kin to the other Beards mentioned--managing editor of the Dayton _Journal_. Besides being a newspaper editor, Beard also taught school at Fairfield, about two miles from the Huffman farm, and went back and forth by the interurban car line that passed the field where the Wrights were making history. It sometimes happened that on the trip to Dayton he was on the same car with one or both of the Wright brothers, returning from their flights.

“I used to chat with them in a friendly way and was always polite to them,” Beard recalled, years afterward, chuckling over the joke on himself, “because I sort of felt sorry for them. They seemed like well-meaning, decent enough young men. Yet there they were, neglecting their business to waste their time day after day on that ridiculous flying-machine. I had an idea that it must worry their father.”

In these conversations, neither the Wrights nor Beard was likely to bring up the subject of aviation. The Wrights showed no eagerness to talk about what they were doing, and Beard kept to subjects he considered more sensible. But one day, in the autumn of 1904, several of the school children told him they had seen the Wrights flying all around the field. Maybe, thought Beard, that might make a little local item for the paper. When he next saw Orville Wright on the car, a day or two afterward, Beard asked him if it was true that they had been flying all the way around the field.

Oh, yes, Orville admitted, they often did that. Then Orville began to talk about something else.

Evidently, Beard decided, the fact that an airplane could be flown under perfect control in circles didn’t amount to anything after all. Orville Wright himself didn’t seem to think it was unusual or important. There was no use putting it in the paper. One more reason perhaps for not printing much in the _Journal_ about what the poor, misguided Wrights were doing was that such items were annoying to Frank Tunison, another of the editors--the same Tunison who had turned down the story of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. Having decided that the Wrights were not news, he was naturally irritated to see any reference to them, even on an inside page. “Why do we print such stuff?” he would ask.

However, Beard said to Orville, as they rode along on the car: “If you ever do something _unusual_ be sure and let us know.” From time to time he went or telephoned to the Wright home to find out if by remote chance the brothers had done anything worth mentioning.

“Done anything of special interest lately?” he asked Orville Wright one evening.

“Oh, nothing much,” replied Orville. “Today one of us flew for nearly five minutes.”

“Where did you go?” asked Beard.

“Around the field.”

“Oh! Just around the field. I see. Well, we’ll keep in touch with you.”

Doubtless, reflected the newspaperman, the Wrights’ circling of Mr. Huffman’s pasture for five minutes was pretty good for two local boys. But it was hardly a thing to take up space in the paper. Hadn’t Santos-Dumont circled the Eiffel Tower, and flown all around Paris? One more newspaper writer, like hundreds of others, had failed to distinguish between an airship with a gas bag and a flying-machine heavier than air. (At the time of the thirty-eight-minute flight in 1905, however, Luther Beard was among the spectators at the field.)

Another bright young newspaperman in that vicinity didn’t grasp quite the full significance of what the Wrights were doing. The Dayton _Journal_ had a branch office at Xenia, about eleven miles from where the Wrights did their flying. The reporter in charge of that branch office was an enterprising lad, just out of college, who answered to the name of Fred C. Kelly. His eagle eye spotted an item about the Wrights and their flying-machine in a country weekly, the Osborn _Local_, published in a village a mile or two from the Huffman field. Did he investigate the story? No, he didn’t need to investigate it to feel sure it must be nonsense.

The fact of human flight was still unacceptable and ridiculous even to professional humorists. The humorous weekly, _Puck_, in its issue of October 19, 1904--nearly a month after that first circular flight--published a joke, inspired presumably by absurd reports about two young men at Dayton:

“When,” inquired the friend, “will you wing your first flight?”

“Just as soon,” replied the flying-machine inventor, “as I can get the laws of gravitation repealed.”

The significance of the first complete circular flight, on September 20, 1904, was not overlooked, however, by one man who witnessed it. That was A. I. Root, the Medina bee man. He had traveled by automobile the day before to Xenia, where he had a relative, and then went to the Huffman field, only a few miles away, to become better acquainted with the Wrights. His trip of 175 miles from Medina without serious difficulty with his machine was then almost a feat in itself. He had not needed any repairs until he reached Xenia. (Incidentally, he had remonstrated with the repair man he dealt with there, Mr. Baldner, for his frequent use of profanity; and he was impressed by the fact that no matter how puzzling or discouraging the problem, the Wrights never uttered a profane word.) After going to Huffman field, Root became more than ever interested in the Wrights and as he wished to see all he could of their work for a few days, he arranged for board and lodging at the Beard home across the road. (A little later he even offered to pay the Wrights $100 for material he had obtained from them for articles about their work--but they refused to accept any payment.)

Root knew that the circular flight he had just witnessed was of prime importance, for it demonstrated that the airplane would have practical use. He wrote an eye-witness account of what the Wrights had done for the January 1 (1905) issue of his magazine, _Gleanings in Bee Culture_, and sent a marked copy to the editor of the _Scientific American_, with a letter telling the editor he was free to reprint the article. The editor wrote back that he had not received the marked copy. So Root sent another. But when the editor of the _Scientific American_ saw what Root had printed he paid no attention to it.

Root continued to print articles about the Wrights in his magazine. In December, 1905, he published the fact that a great number of long flights had been made during the previous season, “one of 24 miles in 38 minutes,” probably the first publication of that event in the United States. At about the same time, in its issue of December 16, 1905, the _Scientific American_ said, in an editorial headed “Retrospect for the Year”: “The most promising results (with the airplane) to date were those obtained last year by the Wright brothers, one of whom made a flight of over half a mile in a power-propelled machine.” Previously in the same editorial, though, was the assertion: “... the only successful ‘flying’ that has been done this year--must be credited to the balloon type.” By that time, the Wrights’ total flying distance was about 160 miles.

In its issue of January 13, 1906, in an article headed “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances,” the _Scientific American_ commented skeptically on a letter written by the Wright brothers which had been published in a Paris automobile journal. In that letter the Wrights had given details of the long flights of late September and early October, 1905. In expressing its disbelief in the “alleged” flights described in the Wright letter, the _Scientific American_ said: “If such sensational and tremendously important experiments are being conducted in a not very remote part of the country, on a subject in which almost everybody feels the most profound interest, is it possible to believe that the enterprising American reporter, who, it is well known, comes down the chimney when the door is locked in his face--even if he has to scale a fifteen-story skyscraper to do so--would not have ascertained all about them and published them broadcast long ago?”

A few weeks later, in February, 1906, the editor of the _Scientific American_ wrote to the Wrights to inquire if there was any truth in reports that they were negotiating with the French Government. He enclosed in his letter a clipping of “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances.”

The Wrights wrote in reply that since the _Scientific American_ obtained the data of what it termed “alleged experiments” directly from a published letter signed by the Wright brothers, and since it did not discredit the authenticity of the letter, but only the truthfulness of the statements, they were at a loss to understand why the editor should desire further statements from such a source. They did not answer the inquiry about the negotiations with the French Government.

Most of the long flights in late September and early October, 1905, had been seen by Amos Stauffer, a farmer working in an adjoining field. But he went right ahead husking corn. Another witness, however, was more of a gossip. At one of the October flights, William Fouts, a Dayton druggist, was present, and the Wrights cautioned him not to say anything about what he had seen. But Fouts must have taken a few people into his confidence. In the afternoon of October 5, the Dayton _Daily News_ had an article saying the Wrights were making sensational flights every day. The Dayton correspondent for the _Cincinnati Post_ reported this to his paper which printed it the next day. A fairly good-sized crowd then went to the Huffman pasture. But when they found nothing going on there most of them decided that the reports must have been much exaggerated. Nothing more was said about the Wrights in Ohio papers for some time. John Tomlinson, a reporter on the Dayton _Journal_, and correspondent for out-of-town papers, offered $50 to Henry Webbert, friend of the Wrights, to let him know the date of their next flight. There was one more short flight on October 16, but no newspapermen or other onlookers were at the field.

On March 12, 1906, the Wrights had sent to the Aero Club of America the following list of names of reputable men who had seen one or more of their flights: E. W. Ellis, assistant city auditor; Torrence Huffman, bank president; C. S. Billman, secretary, and W. H. Shank, treasurer of the West Side Building & Loan Association; William, Henry and Charles Webbert, in the plumbing business; Frank Hamburger, hardware dealer; Howard M. Myers, post-office employee; William Fouts and Reuben Schindler, druggists; William Weber, plumber; Bernard H. Lambers, of Dayton Malleable Iron Works. Besides those living in Dayton, were: O. F. Jamieson, traveling salesman, of East Germantown, Ohio; David Beard and Amos Stauffer, of Osborn; and Theodore Waddell, of the Census Bureau at Washington. The Wrights had a list of about sixty persons who had witnessed flights.

Those witnesses named in the published list got requests for confirmatory letters from the _Scientific American_ whose editor finally had decided that reports of what the Wrights had done might be worth looking into. Then, in the issue of April 7, 1906, the magazine reported the long flights of the previous autumn and quoted in full a letter from one of the witnesses. More than six months later, on November 21, 1906, the Aero Club itself wrote to the various persons named in the list received from the Wrights, asking for letters about the flights they had seen.

As late as October, 1906, the _Scientific American_ had devoted more than a column to a letter from J. C. Press, of South Norwalk, Connecticut, who presented arguments to justify his belief that “man may fly within a few years.” But, on the other hand, the letter-writer quoted the editor of _Collier’s Weekly_ as expressing “disbelief in even the ultimate possibility of flight.”

At last, however, in the issue of December 15, 1906, or nearly three years after the Wrights’ first flights, the _Scientific American_ printed an editorial which indicated that the editor was now becoming aware of the facts. The editorial said: “In all the history of invention, there is probably no parallel to the unostentatious manner in which the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, ushered into the world their epoch-making invention of the first successful aeroplane flying-machine.”

X

U. S. ARMY NOT INTERESTED

From the time that they knew their invention was practical, the Wrights wished to offer to their own government a world monopoly on all their patents and, still more important, all their secrets relating to the airplane. They thought it might be useful to the Army for scouting purposes. But as they had greater interest at first in learning more about flying and improving their machine than in making money out of it, they did not at once attempt negotiations with government officials at Washington. When they did make such an effort they received a rude shock. The United States Army not only didn’t believe there was any such device in existence as a practical flying-machine, but was not disposed to investigate.

At least one foreign government showed more awareness and more curiosity. In the autumn of 1904, the Wrights got a letter from Lieutenant Colonel J. E. Capper, of the Royal Aircraft Factory (a government experimental laboratory dealing with aeronautics) at Aldershot. He wrote on shipboard en route to the United States, and enclosed a note of introduction from another Englishman whom the Wrights knew, Patrick Y. Alexander, member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. (Alexander had called upon the Wrights at Dayton in 1902, with a letter of introduction from Octave Chanute.) Colonel Capper wanted to know if he might see the Wrights in Dayton when he returned eastward from a visit to the St. Louis Exposition. They told him they would be glad to see him and he came to Dayton, accompanied by his wife, in November.

Soon after his arrival, Colonel Capper frankly said that he was there at the request of his government. The Wrights told him of what they had accomplished during that previous season of 1904 at the Huffman field. Before leaving, Colonel Capper asked them to make his government some kind of proposal.

The Wrights made no haste about submitting a proposal to the British, but, on January 10, 1905, about two months after the Capper visit, they wrote to him asking if he was sure his government was receptive to an offer. In this letter they suggested that a government in possession of such a machine as they now could furnish, and the knowledge and instruction they could impart might have a lead of several years over governments which waited to buy a perfected machine before making a start in this line. The letter was signed: Wright Cycle Company.

Whatever the British Government might desire, the Wrights did not intend to take any steps that could prevent the United States Government from having opportunity to control all rights in their invention for the entire world; and before having any further word from the British it seemed wise to learn from Washington just what our own government might want. They wrote, on January 18, 1905, to their member of Congress from the Dayton district, R. M. Nevin, as follows:

The series of aeronautical experiments upon which we have been
engaged for the past five years has ended in the production of
a flying-machine of a type fitted for practical use. It not
only flies through the air at high speed, but it also lands
without being wrecked. During the year 1904 one hundred and
five flights were made at our experimenting station, on the
Huffman prairie, east of the city; and though our experience in
handling the machine has been too short to give any high degree
of skill, we nevertheless succeeded, toward the end of the
season, in making two flights of five minutes each, in which
we sailed round and round the field until a distance of about
three miles had been covered, at a speed of thirty-five miles
an hour. The first of these record flights was made on November
9th, in celebration of the phenomenal political victory of the
preceding day, and the second, on December 1st, in honor of the
one hundredth flight of the season.

The numerous flights in straight lines, in circles, and over
“S”-shaped courses, in calms and in winds, have made it quite
certain that flying has been brought to a point where it can be
made of great practical use in various ways, one of which is
that of scouting and carrying messages in time of war. If the
latter features are of interest to our own government, we shall
be pleased to take up the matter either on a basis of providing
machines of agreed specification, at a contract price, or of
furnishing all the scientific and practical information we have
accumulated in these years of experimenting, together with a
license to use our patents; thus putting the government in a
position to operate on its own account.

If you can find it convenient to ascertain whether this is a
subject of interest to our own government, it would oblige
us greatly, as early information on this point will aid us in
making our plans for the future.

Respectfully yours,
WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT

Mr. Nevin forwarded the letter to the Secretary of War who turned it over to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification. That Board evidently regarded the letter simply as something for their “crank file.” They had received many proposals in the past from inventors of perpetual motion machines and flying-machines and had stock paragraphs to use in reply.

Their response to Nevin, signed by Major General G. L. Gillespie, of the General Staff, the President of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, said:

I have the honor to inform you that, as many requests have been
made for financial assistance in the development of designs
for flying-machines, _the Board has found it necessary to
decline to make allotments for the experimental development
of devices for mechanical flight_, and has determined that,
before suggestions with that object in view will be considered,
_the device must have been brought to the stage of practical
operation_ without expense to the United States.

_It appears from the letter of Messrs. Wilbur and Orville
Wright that their machine has not yet been brought to the
stage of practical operation_, but as soon as it shall have
been perfected, this Board would be pleased to receive further
representations from them in regard to it.[6]

It will be noted, of course, that what the letter said bore almost no relation to anything the Wrights had written.

Having thus been brushed aside by their own government, the Wrights now might have been conscience clear to do as they saw fit with a foreign government. But nevertheless they determined that, no matter how public officials at Washington behaved, they would take no steps which could shut off their own government from use of the airplane if Army people ever got around to understanding the machine’s potential importance.

On February 11, 1905, the Wrights received a letter from the British War Office, asking them to submit terms, and March 1, without giving formal terms, they outlined in a general way what they were willing to do.

“Although we consider it advisable,” they wrote to the British War Office, “that any agreement which may be made at present be based upon a single machine and necessary instruction in its use, we would be willing, if desired, to insert in the contract an option on the purchase of all that we know concerning the subject of aviation ...

“We are ready to enter into a contract with the British Government to construct and deliver to it an aerial scouting machine of the aeroplane type ...”

Specifications included these: The machine to be capable of carrying two men of average weight, and supplies of fuel for a flight of not less than fifty miles; its speed, when flying in still air, to be not less than thirty miles an hour; the machine to be of substantial enough construction to make landings without being broken, when operated with a reasonable degree of skill.

Another provision was that the purchase price should be determined by the maximum distance covered in one of the trial flights; £500, or about $2,500 for each mile. If none of the trial flights was of at least ten miles, then the British Government would not be obligated to accept the machine.

There were further exchanges of letters between the Wrights and the British (altogether twenty-four letters in the years 1905–6), but the brothers began to suspect that the British were mainly interested in prolonging the negotiations as a means of keeping in touch and knowing what progress was being made in aviation. Probably, thought the Wrights, the British shrewdly foresaw that the flying-machine would not add to the isolation of the British Isles, and did not wish to hasten its development. But they doubtless wished to be well informed about whatever was happening in the conquest of the air.

The British War Office wrote on May 13, 1905, that they were asking Colonel H. Foster, their military attaché, in Washington, to call upon the Wrights at their “works”--meaning, presumably, at their shop--and to see their machine in flight.

The brothers were urged by their friend Octave Chanute on one of his visits to Dayton, to make another offer of their machine to the United States Army. Because of the treatment they had received from the War Department, the Wrights were naturally reluctant to expose themselves to further rebuffs, but Chanute was insistent that such behavior by Army people surely would not occur again. Thus prodded by Chanute, the Wrights, on October 9, 1905, wrote to the Secretary of War:

Some months ago we made an informal offer to furnish to
the War Department practical flying-machines suitable for
scouting purposes. The matter was referred to the Board of
Ordnance and Fortification, which seems to have given it scant
consideration. We do not wish to take this invention abroad,
unless we find it necessary to do so, and therefore write
again, renewing the offer.

We are prepared to furnish a machine on contract, to be
accepted only after trial trips in which the conditions of
the contract have been fulfilled; the machine to carry an
operator and supplies of fuel, etc., sufficient for a flight
of one hundred miles; the price of the machine to be regulated
according to a sliding scale based on the performance of the
machine in the trial trips; the minimum performance to be a
flight of at least twenty-five miles at a speed of not less
than thirty miles an hour.

We are also willing to take contracts to build machines
carrying more than one man.

Respectfully yours,
WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT.

Once again the Secretary of War referred their letter to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification. Major General J. C. Bates, member of the General Staff, had become president of the Board since the previous correspondence, and he signed the reply. The Wrights blinked at the familiar phrases in the opening paragraph:

“I have the honor to inform you,” said the Major General, “that, as many requests have been made for financial assistance in the development of designs for flying-machines, the Board has found it necessary to decline to make allotments for the experimental development of devices for mechanical flight, and has determined that, before suggestions with that object in view will be considered, the device must have been brought to the stage of practical operation without expense to the United States.”

The letter went on: “Before the question of making a contract with you for the furnishing of a flying-machine is considered it will be necessary for you to furnish this Board with the approximate cost of the completed machine, the date upon which it would be delivered, and with such drawings and descriptions thereof as are necessary to enable its construction to be understood and a definite conclusion as to its practicability to be arrived at. Upon receipt of this information, the matter will receive the careful consideration of the Board.”

In other words, the Board would have to see drawings and descriptions to determine if the machine the Wrights had been flying could fly!

Regardless of whatever irritation they felt, the Wrights wrote to the Ordnance Board on October 19. In that letter they said:

We have no thought of asking financial assistance from the
government. We propose to sell the results of experiments
finished at our own expense.

In order that we may submit a proposition conforming as nearly
as possible to the ideas of your board, it is desirable that
we be informed what conditions you would wish to lay down as
to the performance of the machine in the official trials,
prior to the acceptance of the machine. We cannot well fix a
price, nor a time for delivery, till we have your idea of the
qualifications necessary to such a machine. We ought also to
know whether you would wish to reserve a monopoly on the use of
the invention, or whether you would permit us to accept orders
for similar machines from other governments, and give public
exhibitions, etc.

Proof of our ability to execute an undertaking of the nature
proposed will be furnished whenever desired.

Here is what Captain T. C. Dickson, Recorder of the Board, wrote in reply:

The Board of Ordnance and Fortification at its meeting October
24, 1905, took the following action:

The Board then considered a letter, dated October 19, 1905,
from Wilbur and Orville Wright requesting the requirements
prescribed by the Board that a flying-machine would have to
fulfill before it would be accepted.

It is recommended the Messrs. Wright be informed that the Board
does not care to formulate any requirements for the performance
of a flying-machine or take any further action on the subject
_until a machine is produced which by actual operation is
shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an
operator_.

Such letters did not encourage the Wrights to press their offer further. As Wilbur expressed it, they had taken pains to see that “opportunity gave a good clear knock on the War Department door.” It had always been their business practice, he said, to sell to those who wished to buy instead of trying to force goods upon people who did not want them. And now if the American Government had decided to spend no more money on flying-machines until their practical use should be demonstrated abroad, the Wrights felt that there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Chanute, too, was now convinced that the seeming stupidity of War Department officials was not accidental. His comment was: “Those fellows are a bunch of asses.”

On that same day, October 19, when they wrote to the Ordnance Board, the Wrights had sent a letter also to the British War Office amending their earlier proposal. They said that recent events justified them in making the acceptance of their machine dependent upon a trial flight of at least fifty miles, instead of only ten miles as in the original offer.