Chapter L: M. Wainwright, president of the Diamond Chain Company, of (4)

Before leaving Dayton, the Frenchmen said they believed they knew what was back of the failure to close the deal. They said frankly that it was probably the present attitude of Captain Ferber, the man who had been instrumental in starting the negotiations. Ferber, they thought, with the Moroccan question no longer pressing, had now decided that with his knowledge of the Wright plane he could build one himself, and so become the French pioneer in aviation--a greater honor than being merely the instrument of introducing the aeroplane into France.

During the time the Frenchmen were at their hotel in Dayton, it might have been expected that their presence would become known to local newspapermen and that the world would have learned of what was going on. To avoid attracting attention they had taken the precaution to avoid the Hotel Algonquin where Fordyce had stayed on his earlier visit, and were at the Beckel House. They were unmolested there until an employee of one of the telegraph offices “tipped off” a reporter friend. The telegrapher had noticed various cables in code going to France and felt sure the Frenchmen must be carrying on an important deal. A reporter nabbed Fordyce and Bonel one evening in the hotel lobby on their return from a theater. As Bonel spoke no English, Fordyce parried the reporter’s questions. He thought a plausible explanation of their presence would be that they were studying the water system of a typical American city. But what he said was that they were studying Dayton’s “water pipes.” That satisfied as well as amused the reporter and nothing about the French commission got into the papers.

The local newspapermen had failed to note that, after Fordyce’s previous visit, the New York _Herald_ of January 4 had printed a brief item about his having seen the Wrights to discuss a contract. It never occurred to anyone in Dayton that the Wright brothers could have attracted visitors from across the Atlantic, for the Wrights still were not “news.” If the Frenchmen had made a statement that they were there dickering with the Wrights for a $200,000 contract, it is possible that the local papers would not have printed it. They might not have believed such a tale.

Only a few days after the French commission had left Dayton, another foreign visitor dropped in on the Wrights--the Englishman, Patrick Y. Alexander.

After some casual talk, he inquired with seeming innocence, as if just to make conversation: “Is the French commission still here?”

The Wrights were startled. So great had been the secrecy about the visit of the Frenchmen that not many even in the French Government were permitted to know about their trip to Dayton. How did this mysterious Britisher know about it? The Wrights assumed that he must have been a volunteer worker in the British secret service. It was now obvious that he had crossed the Atlantic for no other purpose than to call on the Wrights and had hoped to burst in upon them while the Frenchmen were still there. After a stay of only one day in Dayton he hastened back to New York to sail on the next boat. His call made it all the more clear that the British were then more interested in what other European governments were doing about planes than in acquiring an air fleet of their own.

Incredulity about the Wrights’ power flights continued at the Aéro Club and in newspaper circles in France. In November, 1906, the Wrights received a visitor in Dayton, Sherman Morse, representing the New York _Herald_. His introduction was a cabled message to his managing editor from the owner of the paper, James Gordon Bennett, in Paris. The message said: Send one of your best reporters to Dayton to get truth about Wright brothers’ reported flights.

The reporter got the truth and wrote intelligent articles that appeared in the New York _Herald_. These included reports of men who had witnessed flights. Parts of the Morse articles appeared in the _Herald’s_ Paris edition on November 22 and 23. But evidently those in charge of the Paris _Herald_ still were not convinced by the reports from Dayton by their own man. On November 28, the Paris _Herald_ had an editorial about the Wrights which included the statement that in Europe curiosity about their machine was “clouded with skepticism owing to the fact that information regarding the invention is so small while the results which its inventors claim to have achieved are so colossal.” And the next day, the Paris _Herald_ gave space to a news item in which Santos-Dumont was reported as saying that he “did not find any evidence of their [the Wrights] having done anything at all.”

Late in 1906, Frank S. Lahm, who had cabled his brother-in-law, Weaver, to make an investigation, was in the United States, and he, accompanied by Weaver, went on November 22 to see the Wrights in Dayton. He was convinced, of course, that their statements could be relied upon, but he made further investigation of his own, interviewing witnesses not previously seen by Weaver. After his return to Paris, he prepared a long letter to the Paris _Herald_, in which he expressed his belief in the reported flights. The newspaper devoted a column to the Lahm letter on February 10, 1907. But having distrusted what their own representative had written, it was not to be expected that the editors would give full belief to what Lahm now told them. In the same issue as his letter, was an editorial headed “Flyers or Liars.” “The Wrights have flown or they have not flown,” the paper profoundly stated. “They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either flyers or liars.... It is difficult to fly; it is easy to say ‘we have flown.’”

XII

THE WRIGHTS IN EUROPE

The Wrights were at work in 1906 developing a new engine having vertical instead of horizontal cylinders. Though they were doing no flying, brief references to them occasionally appeared in newspapers. These caught the attention of a New York businessman, U. S. Eddy, who thought the Wrights and their patents might be of interest to Charles R. Flint & Company, New York bankers and promoters. Eddy was a former partner of Flint in a shipping line and knew that they were constantly on the lookout for new inventions worthy of their consideration. Partly to do a favor for an old friend and associate, he decided to go to Dayton for a talk with the Wrights.

Eddy arrived in Dayton on Thanksgiving Day and saw the Wrights the next day. They did not discuss business at this meeting. Eddy simply got acquainted with them, and satisfied himself that any statements they made about their invention could be depended upon; but he did tell them he felt sure the Flint firm would be much interested in helping them to develop the machine’s financial possibilities.

The Wrights left Dayton on December 5 for New York, to attend an exhibit to be given by the newly formed Aero Club of America. Before leaving New York they went with Eddy to meet F. R. Cordley, a member of the Flint firm. At this time Flint was in Europe, but the Wrights met him in New York not long afterward. Flint was often over-enthusiastic about new projects, and Cordley was the more cautious member of the firm. His job was to hold Flint in check. But he, as well as Flint and other associates, was favorably impressed by the Wrights, and they began to talk business. On December 26, 1906, George H. Nolte, an employee of the firm, went to Dayton to work out preliminary details. At first the Flints spoke of the possibility of buying all European rights to the airplane; but the deal finally made was that the Flints should be the Wrights’ business representatives, on a twenty per cent commission basis, in all countries except the United States. A year or two later it was agreed that the Wrights should manage their own affairs also in Great Britain and its colonies.

The Flints proposed that they would have the Czar of Russia, and certain other crowned heads, request private demonstrations of the flying-machine. But the Wrights were not impressed by such suggestions and in a letter to the Flints said they thought it would be better for them to “look the ground over first before making arrangements with the Czar.”

The Flints had an associate in Europe, Hart O. Berg, who, in 1899, had helped to introduce American electric automobiles on the continent. He had acted, too, for Simon Lake, inventor of the submarine, in dealing with Russia and other foreign governments. They thought Berg might be able to start negotiations for forming a European Wright company. But Berg, not knowing the Wrights, and feeling scant confidence in what they were reported to have done, was less than lukewarm over the idea. Flint suggested that it would be well for at least one of the Wrights to go to Europe, with expenses paid, to discuss their invention with Berg and give him more faith in it. The Wrights themselves, said Flint, could do more than anyone else to implant in Berg the wholehearted enthusiasm he would need to convince possible buyers.

On May 15, 1907, a telegram came from the Flint office urging that one of the Wrights should start to Europe at once. Wilbur “grabbed a few things” and prepared to go to New York the next day, to sail on the _Campania_. As he planned to tarry abroad only a short time--only long enough to convince Berg--his baggage consisted of one suit case. He would stop first in England for a brief stay before going to Paris.

Wilbur was to land in Liverpool on a Saturday. Berg, eager to see one of the Wrights face to face and settle in his own mind if these inventors were really dependable, went to London to meet him.

“I knew him the minute he stepped from the train,” said Berg long afterward. “To begin with, it is always easy to spot an American among Englishmen, and I saw no other American coming down the platform. But even if there had been other Americans I’m sure I would have known which one was Wilbur Wright. There was a modest self-assurance about him that tallied with his character as I had heard about it.”

After the first greetings, Berg said: “Now let’s see about picking up the rest of your luggage.”

But Wilbur smilingly explained that the one suit case was all he had brought.

On the way to the hotel, Wilbur decided that it might be advisable for him to buy a suit of evening clothes and they went at once to a tailor shop on the Strand.

It didn’t take Berg long to convince himself that Wilbur Wright was no slicker, but decidedly on the level, and that if he said his machine would fly, then it must be true.

A day after their first meeting, Berg and Wilbur were joined by F. R. Cordley, of the Flint firm, in Europe on a vacation trip, and the three went to Paris together. They “descended,” as the French say, at the Hotel Meurice, on the rue de Rivoli.

It was still broad daylight when they arrived and Berg almost immediately led Wilbur across the street into the Tuileries gardens. They strolled to the Place de la Concorde and looked up the length of the magnificent Avenue des Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. The horse chestnut trees were still in blossom, and Berg, a resident of Paris during most of his life, was feeling happy over the opportunity to show this stranger his first glimpse of the most beautiful city on earth at its loveliest season.

Before he had been long in Paris, Wilbur attended a balloon meet at St. Cloud, and a few days later made his first trip in a balloon.

A Paris _Herald_ reporter, who talked with Wilbur at St. Cloud, was impressed by his reticence and made this statement: “Mr. Wright talked carefully, as if all was mapped out in advance. It was obvious that he feared to be caught in a trap concerning his remarkable machine and what he wants to do with it. At the end of each question his clean-shaven face relapsed into a broad, sphinx-like smile.”

It now seemed wise to try to form a company to buy European rights to the airplane, or to sell the rights to a private financier, rather than to deal with the Government, through politicians; and a wealthy man had become interested: M. Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, an oil magnate, who had also been a patron of ballooning.

When Wilbur Wright met Deutsch de la Meurthe, the latter, a cautious trader, said that before investing any money he wanted to make sure the French Government would be interested in buying airplanes.

Wilbur then decided that it would be both discourteous and imprudent not to have a talk with Letellier or Fordyce, with whom there had been previous negotiations, and let them know what was going on--particularly since Deutsch de la Meurthe was known to have close relations with _Le Matin_, a rival of Letellier’s newspaper, _Le Journal_. He got in touch with Fordyce, and told him a little of the current situation. Shortly afterward, Letellier invited Wilbur to lunch. Letellier seemed indignant that the Wrights had not resumed negotiations with him. Wilbur told him he could doubtless be included if a company should be formed. But that didn’t suit Letellier. He didn’t care to join a company organized by Deutsch de la Meurthe; if a company was formed he wanted to be the prime mover in it himself. He said nothing, however, about interfering with efforts being made to form a company--possibly because he thought they would not be successful.

Deutsch de la Meurthe now went to call upon the Minister of Marine, with whom he was well acquainted, and was escorted by him to meet the Minister of War, General Picquart, a hero of the Dreyfus case.

General Picquart was not familiar with what had previously been done regarding the possible purchase of a Wright machine, as the negotiations had been carried on during the regime of his predecessor. But he had Commandant Bonel bring the records to him and when he looked them over was impressed by the fact that the Wrights’ invention had been considered seriously. No less impressed was Deutsch de la Meurthe. General Picquart said he realized the importance of the Wright invention and was disposed to take favorable action toward buying planes, provided the Wrights would guarantee that their machine could fly at a height of 300 meters.

That was enough encouragement for Deutsch de la Meurthe. In fact, he became highly enthusiastic over the outlook. He had not before appreciated the seriousness of the previous negotiations. Now he began to talk about details of the articles of incorporation of a proposed company.

Commandant Bonel was elated over the news that his government might at last be buying Wright airplanes. His pride and prestige had been hurt by the failure of his recommendations to be accepted. Moreover, for patriotic reasons, he wanted the French Army to be the first to adopt what he regarded as an epoch-making new invention. Now that the outlook was once again more favorable, he was in a communicative mood when he chanced to meet Fordyce, with whom he had traveled to Dayton.

Fordyce showed his surprise at what Bonel told him. He went at once to tell this news to his employer, M. Letellier. Now Letellier expressed great indignation. He had an agreement in writing, he said, that if the War Ministry bought any Wright airplanes the purchase should be made through _Le Journal_, and any departure from that plan he must construe as an unfriendly and illegal act. Immediately he went to the office of the Minister of War where with great politeness he showed to General Picquart a letter obtained from his predecessor.

Since the option the Wrights had given to Fordyce had expired, the agreement between the War Ministry and Letellier was no longer in force. But General Picquart, if he understood that, after a hasty examination of the records, did not argue the point. Possibly he was too practical a politician to enter a controversy with an influential publisher. At any rate, he asked Deutsch de la Meurthe to withdraw from the negotiations.

It was Deutsch de la Meurthe’s turn to be indignant. He believed at first that the Wrights had simply used him for a tool. But later, when he understood the facts and saw that the Wrights were not to blame for what had happened, he once more was friendly with them.

The Wrights saw that their most promising opportunity for an immediate contract was through Letellier and _Le Journal_. Consequently, Fordyce, representing that newspaper, came back into the picture. Within a day or two after negotiations were thus resumed, Fordyce came to Berg in an apologetic mood, showing deep embarrassment. He said he had been asked to submit a proposal that it hardly seemed worth while to discuss at all; and yet he had no choice but to convey a message, as had been requested of him, by a man high in government circles. The deal might go through at once, said Fordyce, but there would have to be a little re-wording of the contract. The Wrights must not ask 1,000,000 francs but 1,250,000 francs. Then they would receive their million francs.

Berg knew well enough what would happen when he told this to Wilbur.

There would be no objection to having the contract call for more money than the Wrights were to receive, said Wilbur calmly, _but_ the contract must give the name of the man who would receive that additional sum.

Berg went to the office of the man who had communicated, by way of Fordyce, the astounding suggestion. He hoped there had been some misunderstanding. But to Berg’s astonishment and disgust, the man said with shocking candor that he would indeed expect 250,000 francs ($50,000) as his reward for putting through the deal.

Before indignantly walking out of the man’s office, Berg told him the Wrights would never be a party to such financial irregularity and that the negotiations with the Minister of War would have to be carried on without the co-operation of anyone in the Government who expected to be paid for his efforts. (After the first World War that same man was tried for treason.)

Meanwhile, Wilbur had cabled to Orville to join him in Paris. And with the prospect that it might be necessary to make a demonstration of what the Wright machine could do, a plane was crated and shipped from Dayton to France.

Orville arrived in Paris around the first of August, and the Wright’s chief mechanic, Charlie Taylor, came about a week later.

While crossing the Atlantic, Orville had a talk with another passenger that illustrates his possession of a freakish kind of memory. An Englishman had been introduced to him and, after a few moments of conversation, Orville asked if they had not met before. No, the Englishman said, they had not. He had no recollection of any previous meeting, and he was sure if there had been one he would remember it. The man’s face was not familiar, but there was something about his voice and gestures that somehow stirred in Orville old memories. Finally, Orville inquired:

“Were you by any chance at the World’s Fair in Chicago back in 1893?”

The Englishman nodded.

“And,” asked Orville, “did you ever have occasion to explain to a bystander some kind of device at one of the exhibits?”

Yes, that also might have happened.

“There,” said Orville, much relieved that his memory had not played him tricks, “must have been where I saw you. I felt sure I couldn’t be mistaken about your voice.”

After Orville had joined Wilbur at the Hotel Meurice, the brothers did not find their business affairs too pressing to do a lot of sight-seeing. Neither one spoke French, but Orville had acquired a fair reading knowledge of it. Oddly enough, Wilbur, who had learned Greek and Latin easily, made no effort to learn French. He jokingly said it was a convenience not to know it, as it saved him from a lot of talking.

As they went about their sight-seeing, Wilbur, always a reader of history, was especially fascinated by all places of historic interest. Orville found himself spending much time each day in the Louvre. Those days gave him an appreciation of good paintings that he never lost.

Negotiations with the French Government dragged on. For weeks the Wrights were kept in uncertainty. They never saw any of the people they were dealing with. Their only contact with anyone at the War Ministry was through Fordyce, and they had no way of knowing, except from what he told them, whether any progress was being made.

Nothing came of the long negotiations. The Wrights were not alone in being disappointed. Commandant Bonel, not long afterward, perhaps as a consequence of the failure of his recommendations to be accepted, resigned from the Army.

Late in the summer of 1907, the Wrights left Paris. Orville went first to London, at the suggestion of Flint & Co. to have a talk with the receiver of the Barnum & Bailey circus and the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, then in bankruptcy. The receiver wondered if the Wright plane could be flown within an enclosure where an admission fee could be charged.

Wilbur Wright had set out with Berg for St. Petersburg. They changed their minds about going to Russia, however, and, instead, stopped at Berlin where Orville shortly afterward joined them.

As the train on which Wilbur and Berg traveled was passing through Belgium, Wilbur noticed a sign indicating that they were in the little town of Jemappes. Then he recalled that a great battle took place there back in 1792. He began to discuss the battle with an exact knowledge of details that astounded Berg. Wilbur had read about it in his youth. Over and over again, Berg and others who dealt with Wilbur Wright, were similarly impressed not only by the range of his reading but by the fact that no knowledge he had once acquired ever seemed to grow dim.

In Berlin, the brothers were able to gain direct contact with top flight men--with the minister of the Kaiser’s war department,[8] and also with the minister of the department of transportation. These German officials were highly intelligent and not slow about recognizing the tremendous importance of the Wright machine if it would perform as the brothers said it could. The Wrights had proposed a contract in which they would agree to furnish a machine capable of carrying, at a speed of forty miles an hour, two men and a supply of fuel for a flight of 125 miles, and to make a demonstration flight of one hour fulfilling every requirement of the contract before one pfennig should be paid to them. The German officials could not deny the fairness of this offer, and could see no reason why the Wrights should have made it unless they could carry it out. Besides, they were not altogether unacquainted with the earlier work of the Wright brothers, accounts of whose glider and power flights had been appearing for five or six years in German technical publications. But in spite of all this the officials were in a quandary. They could not bring themselves to believe that what the Wrights now offered could be possible. They were afraid to sign their names to a contract that generally would be considered as foolish as a contract for a perpetual motion machine. They might become the laughingstock of the world.

On the other hand, these officials did not want to let an invention of such potentialities, if it really existed, slip through their fingers. They therefore gave, instead of a signed contract, their solemn verbal promise that if the Wrights would make a flight before them, such as had been offered in the proposed written contract, they would buy planes on the terms the Wrights had offered.[9]

The Wrights felt that these officials, being at the head of important departments, could be relied upon, and they were willing to take their verbal guarantee to buy planes upon the successful demonstration of the machine. When they left Germany, they fully expected to return the next March to make such a demonstration. (They could not foresee that they would have too many other engagements in definite contracts elsewhere before another four months had passed.)

Wilbur Wright returned from Europe in November of 1907. But Orville remained a little longer to attend to having a number of engines built in Paris by the firm of Barriquand & Marre. The Wrights wanted to have in reserve duplicates of their American engine, at that time in customs, at Le Havre, for use the next year. Barriquand & Marre were manufacturers of precision instruments and had built light motors. They doubted if the Wright motor gave as much power as was claimed for it, but they felt sure that if it did, the copies they made of it--on account of more careful workmanship--would give considerably more power than the original. But as later events showed, they gave less. At that time it was not known that when one motor is made as an exact copy, to the thousandth of an inch, of another motor, of supposedly the same steels and other metals, but from different foundries and mills, months of experiment are required before the new motor can be made to work properly.

XIII

A DEAL WITH THE U. S.

While in Paris, in 1907, the Wrights naturally had visits with Frank S. Lahm, who had arranged with his brother-in-law, Henry Weaver, of Mansfield, to investigate the reports from America of human flight. Lahm invited the inventors to his home and there they met his son, Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm,[10] who was recuperating from an attack of typhoid fever. The younger Lahm, a former instructor at West Point, had recently spent a year at the French Cavalry School at Saumur. He, as well as his father, was much interested in aeronautics. The previous October he had won the James Gordon Bennett balloon race by starting at Paris and landing in England. Probably the only American Army officer who recognized that the airplane should now be taken seriously, he was delighted to meet the Wright brothers, with whom he now began a lasting friendship. After he had learned a little about their negotiations in France, he began to urge the United States War Department to take more interest in the airplane.

It so happened that, in September, 1907, only a few weeks after this meeting, Lieutenant Lahm was transferred by the War Department from the Cavalry to the Signal Corps, to be stationed at Washington. His first assignment was to make a tour of Europe, before returning to Washington, and report on the situation regarding dirigible aircraft in several countries. Soon afterward he returned to Washington. The presence of a man in the War Department there who felt enthusiasm for the airplane’s possibilities, and who had strong faith in the Wrights, may have had its effect on his associates. At any rate, there was now in the War Department a man who believed in the Wrights.

When Wilbur stopped in Washington shortly before Thanksgiving, 1907, en route to Dayton, on his return from France, he had a talk with General Crozier and Major Fuller of the Ordnance Department, and with General Allen, head of the Signal Corps--the organization that would conduct tests of the airplane and use it if the Ordnance Board sanctioned and provided funds for its purchase. At this meeting Wilbur stated the price the Wrights would accept ($25,000) and the performance of the machine that they were willing to guarantee. These terms, agreed upon between the brothers before Wilbur left France, were stiff enough, it was thought, to bar any competition. The Ordnance Board was to have a meeting on December 5, and Wilbur was invited to appear before it. He did so; but the meeting did not inspire him with confidence that an early contract could be obtained at the price of $25,000. The Wrights were not willing to accept less, because they thought they had better prospects abroad. However, the Signal Corps soon began drawing up specifications, and, on December 23, advertised for bids.

Inasmuch as the Wright machine was the only one in existence that could meet these requirements, and the price was understood in advance, advertising for bids may have been superfluous; but it was considered necessary to meet demands of red tape. Among specifications set forth in the advertisement for bids were these: the plane must be tested in the presence of Army officers; it must be able to carry for one hour a passenger besides the pilot, the two weighing not less than 350 lbs.; it must show an average speed of forty miles an hour, in a ten-mile test, and carry enough fuel for 125 miles. Also, the machine must have “demountability”; that is, it should be built in such a way that it could be taken apart, and later reassembled, without too much difficulty, when necessary to transport it on an army truck from one place to another.

Almost from the day the advertisements for bids appeared, the War Department was subject to editorial attacks--not because it had been so slow about interesting itself in the airplane, but because it had done so at all!

The New York _Globe_ said:

One might be inclined to assume from the following
announcement, “the United States Army is asking bids for a
military airship,” that the era of practical human flight had
arrived, or at least that the government had seriously taken
up the problem of developing this means of travel. A very
brief examination of the conditions imposed and the reward
offered for successful bidders suffices, however, to prove this
assumption a delusion.

A machine such as is described in the Signal Corps’
specifications would record the solution of all the
difficulties in the way of the heavier-than-air airship, and,
in fact, finally give mankind almost as complete control of the
air as it now has of the land and the water. It would be worth
to the world almost any number of millions of dollars, would
certainly revolutionize warfare and possibly the transportation
of passengers; would open to easy access regions hitherto
inaccessible except to the most daring pioneers and would,
in short, be probably the most epoch-making invention in the
history of civilization.

Nothing in any way approaching such a machine has ever been
constructed (the Wright brothers’ claims still await public
confirmation), and the man who has achieved such a success
would have, or at least should have, no need of competing in a
contest where the successful bidder might be given his trial
because his offer was a few hundred or thousand dollars lower
than that of someone else. If there is any possibility that
such an airship is within measurable distance of perfection
any government could well afford to provide its inventor
with unlimited resources and promise him a prize, in case of
success, running into the millions.

The _American Magazine of Aeronautics_ (later called _Aeronautics_) devoted its opening article in the issue of January, 1908, to pointing out the absurdity of what the War Department was trying to do.

There is not a known flying-machine in the world which could
fulfill these specifications at the present moment, [declared
the editorial].... Had an inventor such a machine as required
would he not be in a position to ask almost any reasonable sum
from the government for its use? Would not the government,
instead of the inventor, be a bidder?... Perhaps the Signal
Corps has been too much influenced by the “hot air” of
theorizers, in which aeronautics unfortunately abounds, who
have fathomed the entire problem without ever accomplishing
anything; talk is their stock in trade and models or machines
are beneath them because beyond their impractical nature....
Why is not the experience with Professor Langley a good
guide?... We doubt very much if the government receives any
bids at all possible to be accepted.

To the surprise of nearly everyone, forty-one proposals were received. Most of the bidders were the same kind of cranks the Ordnance Board had at first supposed the Wrights to be; and their bids were rejected when they failed to put up a required ten per cent of the proposed price of the plane, as a sign of good faith. Two other bidders besides the Wrights did make a ten per cent deposit. One of these, J. F. Scott, of Chicago, had made a bid of $1,000, and promised delivery of a plane in 185 days. Another was A. M. Herring. His price was $20,000; delivery to be in 180 days. The Wrights’ bid was $25,000, with delivery promised in 200 days.

Receipt of these unexpected bids created a problem. Everyone assumed that none of the bidders except the Wrights had anything practical to offer; and yet the government would be expected to accept the lowest bid and let the winner show what he could do. No matter how dismally he failed to meet requirements, dealing with him would take up time and cause delays.

General Allen, of the Signal Corps, went to Secretary of War Taft to inquire how the War Department might get around the difficulty. Taft said they could accept all legal bids and as only the Wrights could meet the requirements, the others would be eliminated. The only difficulty was that even if no money would ever be paid to the other bidders, yet it would be illegal to accept the bids unless enough money to pay for whatever was ordered was known to be available. However, Taft suggested a way around that. He knew that the President had at his disposal an emergency fund to do with as he saw fit. If the President wished to he could guarantee that all bidders would be paid if they met the tests.

General Allen, accompanied by Captain Charles De Forest Chandler and Lieutenant F. P. Lahm, Signal Corps officers, called upon President Roosevelt who promptly agreed with Taft’s suggestion. He told them to accept all bids and that he would place funds at their disposal to meet legal technicalities. The Signal Corps then agreed to buy planes from all three bidders if they met the necessary requirements.

One of those bidders soon eliminated himself by asking the Government to return his ten per cent deposit. Though the government was not obliged to return the deposit, it nevertheless did so. Herring, the only remaining legal bidder besides the Wrights, hung on a while longer.

What A. M. Herring had in mind was simply to obtain the contract in consequence of his lower price and then try to sublet it to the Wrights. He even had the effrontery to go to Dayton to see the Wrights and make such a proposal. Naturally, they were not interested.

The Wrights’ bid was accepted on February 8, 1908.

As it happened, this was not the only important contract the Wrights entered into at about that time. On March 3, three weeks after the Signal Corps had accepted their bid, they closed a contract with Lazare Weiller, a wealthy Frenchman, to form a syndicate to buy the rights to manufacture, sell, or license the use of the Wright plane in France. Upon completion of certain tests of the machine, the Wrights were to receive a substantial amount in cash, a block of stock, and provision for royalties. The French company would be known as La Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne. A member of the syndicate was M. Deutsch de la Meurthe who had taken steps toward forming a French company some time previously.

One provision of the U. S. War Department contract was that the Government could deduct ten per cent of the purchase price for each mile per hour that the machine fell short of the forty-mile goal. That is, if it went only thirty-nine miles an hour, the Wrights would be docked ten per cent; if only thirty-eight miles, another ten per cent, and so on. If the machine did not do at least thirty-six miles an hour, then the Government didn’t have to accept it at all. On the other hand, the Wrights would receive a ten per cent bonus for each mile per hour they attained above forty.

It was the intention of the Signal Corps, and the Wrights so understood it, that these reduced or additional payments would be for either a mile or a fraction of a mile. But a Government legal department made a surprising interpretation of that part of the contract. If at the time of the tests the plane went 40-99/100 miles, the Wrights would not be paid for more than 40; but if the plane fell short of 40 miles an hour by only 1/100 of a mile, or even less, then they would be docked for a full mile.

(Orville did not learn of that astounding example of the legal mind at work until after he arrived at Washington to prepare for the tests and it was then too late to build a faster plane. But in the final tests the next year, he had a plane that he knew would give the buyer no opportunity to take advantage of what he regarded as a one-sided interpretation of the contract.)

Though the Wrights had done no flying since October, 1905, they had done much work on improving both plane and engine. Their newest engine, capable of producing about thirty-five horsepower continuously, was also so much better as to reliability that now long flights could be made without danger of failure of the motive power.

During all their experiments at the Huffman pasture they had continued to ride “belly-buster,” as a boy usually does when coasting on a sled. Lying flat in that way and controlling the mechanism partly by swinging the hips from one side to the other was good enough for the experimental stages of aviation; but the Wrights knew that if a plane was to have practical use the pilot must be able to take an ordinary sitting position and do the controlling and guiding with his hands and feet as in an automobile. It was not all fun lying flat for an hour at a time with head raised to be on the lookout for possible obstacles. “I used to think,” said Orville in later years, “the back of my neck would break if I endured one more turn around the field.”

The brothers therefore had adopted a different arrangement of the control levers, for use in a sitting position, and a seat for a passenger. Moreover, the machine could be steered from either seat and thus was suitable for training other pilots if occasion should arise. The plane sent to France for possible trials in 1907 was thus equipped. They revamped the machine they had used at the Huffman pasture in 1905, and installed their later improvements. It now had an engine with vertical instead of horizontal cylinders. With this machine they would go to Kitty Hawk and gain needed practice in handling their new arrangement of the control levers.

The United States Government tests would be made at Fort Myer, Virginia, near Washington. Delivery of the machine had to be made by August 28, and the tests themselves were to begin shortly afterward, in September. But at about that same time, one of the brothers would make a demonstration in France. They had not yet decided which of them would fly at Fort Myer and which should go to France. But both had to be well prepared and there was no time to lose. They must be established at Kitty Hawk as soon as possible.

Wilbur Wright set out for Kitty Hawk ahead of Orville and arrived there April 9, 1908. He was joined within a week by a mechanic from Dayton, Charles W. Furnas. First of all, it was necessary to do much rebuilding of the camp. The buildings had not only suffered from storms, but had been stripped of much timber by persons who supposed the Wrights had permanently abandoned them. The plane was shipped in crates from Dayton April 11, but had to be left for some time in a freight depot at Elizabeth City until the new shed was completed at Kitty Hawk. Both Orville and the plane reached there on April 25.

It might have been expected that with at least two governments now showing interest in the Wright plane, each of the brothers would have been besieged en route by reporters and others. But the general public, including reporters, still seemed disinclined to believe in human flight. At about the same time that the Wrights were preparing to go to Kitty Hawk, a publisher brought out a new novel by H. G. Wells, _Tono-Bungay_, in which the leading character built a gliding machine “along the lines of the Wright brothers’ airplane,” and finally a flying-machine. That stirred one or two American book reviewers to chide the author for putting such fantastic material into a tale otherwise plausible.

Because of the persistence of that kind of incredulity, the Wrights did not expect many sightseers, least of all newspapermen, at Kitty Hawk during their preparations for government tests. Therefore they did not think it necessary to keep their plans secret. Though they weren’t seeking reporters, neither were they trying to avoid them. They simply went ahead without giving any thought to newspapermen one way or another. But the Wrights were about to be discovered.

Not until May 6 did either of the brothers make a flight. But the newspapers, instead of ignoring what the Wrights had done, now began to report what they had _not_ done. On May 1, the _Virginian-Pilot_, of Norfolk (the same paper that had reported, not too accurately, the first flight of an airplane), carried a wild tale that one of the Wright brothers had flown, the day before, ten miles out over the ocean! Practically the same story was widely published the next day. Katharine Wright on May 2 telegraphed her brothers that “the newspapers” had reported a flight. As the Wrights later learned, the _B. Z. Mittag_, in Berlin, carried a dispatch from Paris: “From America comes the news that the Wright brothers for the first time have made in public a controlled flight. The flight was made on April 30, at Norfolk, Va., before a U. S. Government Commission.”

That same story must have reached London, for the Wrights received a cablegram from Patrick Alexander: “Very hearty congratulations.”

Joseph Dosher, who had been the Weather Bureau man at Kitty Hawk in 1903, but was now stationed 30 miles north of Kitty Hawk, telephoned to the Kill Devil life-saving crew, on May 2, seeking information about the Wrights, presumably at the request of some newspaper. That same day, the Greensboro (N. C.) _News_ published a telegram from Elizabeth City, dated May 1, saying that the Wright brothers “of airship fame” were at Nag’s Head with their “famous flying-machine.”

On May 1, the New York _Herald_ had wired to the Weather Bureau operator at Manteo, on Roanoke Island, for information. And on May 2, the _Herald_ published an item with a Norfolk date line, that the Wrights were reported to have flown “over the ocean.” This dispatch appeared also in the _Herald’s_ Paris edition. Just below the report in the Paris edition was an editorial comment that if the Wrights had actually flown two miles, then they had broken the records of Delagrange and Farman in France. The _Herald_ editor evidently was still unaware that long before Delagrange, Farman, or other Wright copyists abroad had even left the ground in flight, the Wright brothers had flown twenty-four miles.

Inasmuch as the Wrights had not yet begun their flights of 1908, it was not easy for the New York _Herald_ to obtain confirmation or more details about the imaginary flight out over the ocean. No regularly employed newspaperman at Norfolk wanted to go to Kitty Hawk on what might be a wild goose chase. But D. Bruce Salley, a free lance reporter at Norfolk, was willing to make the trip.

Salley reached Manteo on May 4, and the Wright brothers’ records show that he came to their camp the next day. He told the brothers he had been asked by a New York paper to investigate the story of their flight over the ocean. The day after Salley’s visit, the Wrights did make their first flight of the season, and though Salley did not see it, he learned about it by phone from one of the men at the Kill Devil life-saving station. His informant told him that one of the Wrights had flown at least 1,000 feet, at about sixty feet above the ground.

Salley immediately sent a query from Manteo, giving briefly the gist of the story, to a list of papers he hoped would be interested. Most of the papers ignored the message; but the telegraph editor of the Cleveland (Ohio) _Leader_ not only wasn’t interested but was indignant that his intelligence should be insulted by the offer of so improbable a tale. He declined to pay the telegraph toll for the short message, even though at the night press rate of only one-third of a cent a word the cost could hardly have been more than a dime. His only reply to Salley was an admonition to “cut out the wild-cat stuff.” Salley, now equally indignant, wired back offering to give names of well-known persons who could testify to his reliability; but the Cleveland editor paid no further attention.

When Salley’s query reached the office of the New York _Herald_, it put the editors in a quandary. Though they had printed the brief report about a flight that hadn’t occurred, now they were beginning to wonder if all the reports about the Wrights weren’t fakes. Yet they knew that the owner of the paper, James Gordon Bennett, living in Paris, would almost certainly discharge any editor responsible for omitting the story if it _were_ true. They decided, with misgivings, to print the story and it appeared the next morning on the first page of the _Herald_, though not in the most prominent position.

Then the editors determined to send a staff man to Kitty Hawk for the facts. They picked for this job their star reporter, brilliant, lovable Byron R. Newton--later to become Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and afterward Collector of Customs in New York--one of the ablest newspapermen of his time. If the Wrights proved to be fakers no one could do a better job than “By” Newton at exposing them.

Other editors, too, decided that the time had come to get the “lowdown” on the Wright brothers. By the time Newton reached the little boarding place, the Tranquil House, in Manteo, he had been joined by two other correspondents: William Hosier, of the New York _American_, and P. H. McGowan, of the London _Daily Mail_. The next day two others arrived: Arthur Ruhl, writer, and James H. Hare, photographer, for _Collier’s Weekly_.

The newly arrived correspondents, noting the desolate isolation of Kitty Hawk, thought it probable enough that the Wrights must prefer to be let alone. Perhaps, they thought, if intruders came, the Wrights wouldn’t fly at all. They decided that if the Wrights were secretive, they themselves would be no less so. They would hide in the pine woods, as near as possible to the Wright camp, and observe with field glasses what happened. That meant a short walk to a wharf on Roanoke Island, five miles by sailing boat to Haman’s Bay, across the sound, and then a walk of a mile or so over the sand to the place where they should secrete themselves. They made a dicker with a boatman to take them all back and forth each day and act as their guide. Provided with food and water, field glasses, and cameras, they set out about 4 o’clock each morning from May 11 to May 14 to keep their vigil. Hour after hour they fought mosquitoes and woodticks and sometimes were drenched by rain. But to their astonishment they several times witnessed human flight.

The first flight any of them witnessed was early in the morning of May 11. “For some minutes,” wrote Newton, “the propeller blades continued to flash in the sun, and then the machine rose obliquely into the air. At first it came directly toward us, so that we could not tell how fast it was going except that it appeared to increase rapidly in size as it approached. In the excitement of this first flight, men trained to observe details under all sorts of distractions forgot their cameras, forgot their watches, forgot everything but this aerial monster chattering over our heads.”

However, “Jimmy” Hare got a good photograph of that flight.

On May 14, the correspondents saw what no person on earth had ever seen before--a flying-machine under complete control carrying _two_ men. First Wilbur made a short flight with Charles W. Furnas as passenger, and then Orville flew with Furnas for nearly three minutes.

Newton predicted in his diary just after that: “Some day Congress will erect a monument here to these Wrights.”[11]

The last flight on May 14, made by Wilbur Wright, ended in an accident. Wilbur had pulled a wrong lever. Repairs would have taken a week, and as the time the brothers could spare had elapsed, the experiments stopped. But after removing the engine and other machinery for shipment to Dayton, the Wrights left the plane in the shed at Kitty Hawk, thinking they might return. The ending of these trials brought no grief to the correspondents who had been getting up before daylight each morning, and returning to Manteo late each afternoon, footsore and tired, with their dispatches still to be written.

One night’s dispatches had brought unexpected trouble for “By” Newton. Though his report had been filed ahead of McGowan’s, in plenty of time to be relayed from his paper’s New York office to Paris and appear in the next morning’s issue of the Paris edition, a needless delay occurred in New York. In consequence, Newton, through no fault of his own, was “scooped” by McGowan the next day in the continental edition of the London _Daily Mail_. When James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of the New York _Herald_, observed that his Paris _Herald_ failed to have any account of the sensational flights at Kitty Hawk the day before, as reported in the rival _Daily Mail_, he was furious. During the two seasons when the Wrights had flown a total of 160 miles at Huffman prairie, Bennett, with scores of reporters at his disposal, had failed to learn the truth of what the Wrights had done. But now when he thought a reporter had missed a story about them, he did not wait to make inquiries but promptly sent a cable to New York ordering Newton suspended from the staff. Under Bennett’s way of conducting his papers, suspension usually was a preliminary to permanent discharge.

Though he was reinstated after he had sent to Bennett a review of the facts, along with some affidavits, Newton, all the rest of his life, felt a grievance against Bennett and the _Herald_.

Incidentally, McGowan’s “scoop” in the continental edition of the _Daily Mail_ which had so disturbed Bennett, was not accepted as truth by everyone who read it. Charles A. Bertrand, in one of the Paris papers, May 15, published this comment: “He [McGowan] depicts the flight in a manner that does honor to his imagination. If the Wrights hadn’t been seen in Europe, one would be justified in believing their very existence as uncertain as their apparatus.”

During the several days the correspondents were at Kitty Hawk, the Wrights knew they were being observed. From time to time they caught glimpses of men’s heads over the hilltop in the distance. Moreover, they heard each day, from members of a life-saving crew, just how many visitors had come. But they simply thought it was a good joke on the mysterious observers, whoever they were.

Arthur Ruhl, of _Collier’s_, had met the Wrights in Dayton about a year before. On May 14, before the final flight, he came over to the camp. But he said nothing about being a member of the group that had been observing the flights.

The Wrights invited Ruhl to stay for lunch. But he declined. He seemed to the Wrights ill at ease and anxious to get away. At a meeting with him some time afterward they learned why. He had come against the wishes of the other correspondents and was afraid he might give away the fact that they were in the near-by woods.