Chapter L: M. Wainwright, president of the Diamond Chain Company, of (5)

On May 15, the day after the crash, when it was evident that there would be no more flights, McGowan, of the _Daily Mail_, went to the camp, accompanied by still another correspondent who had just arrived, Gilson Gardner, of the Washington office of the Newspaper Enterprise Association. McGowan remarked that he had once visited Octave Chanute’s camp at Dune Park, near Chicago, in 1897 for the Chicago _Tribune_. Another visitor at the camp, a day or two before that, was a young man named J. C. Burkhardt, dressed in a brand-new outfit of hunting togs. He was a college boy who had come all the way from Ithaca just to satisfy his curiosity.

“What would you have done,” Orville Wright was asked, afterward, “if all those correspondents had come right to your camp each day and sat there to watch you?”

“We’d have had to go ahead just as if they weren’t there,” he replied. “We couldn’t have delayed our work. There was too much to do and our time was short.”

That the Wrights would have treated the correspondents politely enough was indicated in a letter from Orville Wright to Byron Newton, dated June 7, 1908. Immediately after his return to New York, Newton had written graciously to the Wrights, enclosing clippings of his dispatches to the _Herald_, and expressing his admiration for them and their achievements.

“We were aware of the presence of newspapermen in the woods,” wrote Orville in reply; “at least we had often been told that they were there. Their presence, however, did not bother us in the least, and I am only sorry that you did not come over to see us at our camp. The display of a white flag would have disposed of the rifles and shotguns with which the machine is reported to have been guarded.”

After publication of many dispatches from these eyewitnesses at Kitty Hawk and front page headlines, it might have been expected that the fact of human flight would now be generally accepted. As Newton had written to his paper, there was “no longer any ground for questioning the performance of these men and their wonderful machine.” Ruhl in _Collier’s_ had told how the correspondents had informed the world that “it was all right, the rumors true--that man could fly.” Yet even such reports by leading journalists still did not convince the general public. People began to concede that perhaps there _might_ be something in it, but many newspapers still did not publish the news. When Newton sent an article, some weeks later, on what he had seen at Kitty Hawk, to a leading magazine, it came back to him with the editor’s comment: “While your manuscript has been read with much interest, it does not seem to qualify either as fact or fiction.”

XIV

END OF DISBELIEF

The Wrights decided that Wilbur should go to France to make the demonstrations there. Orville would stay in America to build the machine for the United States Government and test it at Fort Myer, near Washington. Wilbur did not return to Dayton from Kitty Hawk but went to New York where he sailed for Europe on May 21.

Orville arrived at Fort Myer in August. Two mechanics, Taylor and Furnas, who were to assist him, had reached there a few days earlier. Army officers designated a shed on the Fort Myer grounds for use in assembling and housing the plane.

Orville’s first flight was on September 3, 1908. He went from the Cosmos Club, where he was staying, to Fort Myer by street car. It is doubtful if any of the others on that car suspected that this fellow passenger was on his way to perform a miracle. When he reached Fort Myer, Orville got the impression that not all the Army officers present thought he would succeed in meeting the tests required by the contract. The area from which the flights would be made was only about 700 by 1,000 feet. Neither of the Wrights had ever before made flights within so small a space.

Considering that this was an opportunity to see the outstanding wonder of the century, the crowd that strung about the parade ground was small. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., estimated it for his father, then President, at less than one thousand. Indeed, it was probably much less than that.

Orville circled the field one and one-half times on that first test and was in the air only one minute, eleven seconds; but the crowd “went crazy.” “When the plane first rose,” said Roosevelt, Jr., in describing the event, years afterward, “the crowd’s gasp of astonishment was not alone at the wonder of it, but because it was so unexpected. I’ll never forget the impression the sound from the crowd made on me. It was a sound of complete surprise.”

When he landed after this flight it was Orville’s turn to be astonished. Three or four supposedly “hard-boiled” newspapermen who rushed up to interview him had been so stirred by witnessing the “impossible” that each of them had tears streaming down his cheeks.

(Those who witnessed this flight might have been prepared for what they saw and less surprised, since Wilbur Wright for more than a month had been making flights in France--told about in a later chapter--and some of these were reported in the newspapers. But the brief newspaper accounts of Wilbur’s flights seldom if ever had first page display and were not treated as important news. On August 9, the day after Wilbur’s first flight, the New York _Times_ had no mention of the event, though it gave first page space to a dispatch from Canton, Ohio, about a balloon trip, and to a dispatch from Berlin about the German Kaiser contributing to a fund for building another Zeppelin airship.)

Nor did newspapers show too much excitement about this great public demonstration of practical aviation. It was not considered front page news even by Washington papers. The New York _World_ account was on page five and most of the report was not about the wonder of the flying-machine, but about the behavior of the crowd, described as in fear of being hit by what the _World_ called “the vessel.”

Many thousands were present on the second day of the tests when Orville flew about three miles in four minutes, fifteen seconds. After one of these flights, a reporter, it was said, got in touch with Professor Simon Newcomb who, a few years before, had so irrefutably explained why flying was impossible. The reporter wanted to know if Professor Newcomb thought passenger planes would be the next step.

“No,” Newcomb was reported to have replied, “because no plane could ever carry the weight of anyone besides the pilot.” It might have been expected that by this time Professor Newcomb would have become more cautious!

Orville made a short flight on September 7, and two flights the next day; one of eleven minutes, ten seconds; the other of seven minutes, thirty-four seconds. On the morning of September 9, he circled the field fifty-seven times in fifty-seven minutes, twenty-five seconds. Later in the day, he circled the field fifty-five times in one hour, two and one-quarter minutes. Then he surprised and delighted his friend, Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, by inviting him to go with him for a flight. They were in the air six minutes, twenty-four seconds, and circled the field six and one-half times. All three of these flights on the ninth established new world endurance records; two of them for flights with pilot alone, and the third for pilot with passenger. Orville made a flight of one hour, five minutes, fifty-two seconds on September 10, rising to a height of 200 feet and exceeding the world endurance record made by himself the day before. On the next day he again broke the one-man endurance record by flying for one hour, ten minutes, and twenty-four seconds, while circling the field fifty-seven times and describing two figure eights. On the twelfth, he increased the two-man endurance record by taking with him Major George O. Squier, Acting Chief Signal Officer, for a flight of nine minutes, six seconds. Immediately after that, Orville made a flight alone. He circled the field seventy-one times in one hour and fifteen minutes--again breaking the endurance record for one-man flight. It was estimated that he reached a height of 300 feet.

The next and final flight, September 17, ended in tragedy. Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, a twenty-six-year-old West Point graduate, from San Francisco, had been assigned at his own request to go along as passenger. Before they had been in the air more than three or four minutes, and while in the fourth round at a height of about 125 feet over the field, Orville heard, or felt, a light tapping in the rear part of the machine. He thought it was in the chain drive. A hurried glance revealed nothing wrong there; but he decided to shut off the power and descend. Hardly had he reached this decision when two big thumps, which shook the machine violently, followed by the machine swerving to the right, showed that something had gone wrong. He immediately shut off the motor. Directly ahead was a gulley filled with small trees, a dangerous landing spot. He decided on a half-circle to the left, to land on the parade grounds, and it was then that he discovered that the tail was inoperative. By twisting the wings to give the greatest possible resistance to the left one, he did succeed in turning the machine until it faced directly into the field. In this maneuver the machine had descended about one-third of the way toward the ground without any indication of serious trouble. Orville moved the lever to straighten the wing tips, to proceed straight ahead. Then the machine suddenly turned down in front. For fifty feet it was headed almost directly toward the ground, although the front elevator was turned to its limit. When about twenty-five feet from the ground the machine began to right itself, and if there had been another twenty feet to go, or possibly even ten feet, it might have landed safely.

But the recovery of control came too late. The machine hit the ground with such impact that Lieutenant Selfridge was fatally injured and died a few hours later. His skull had been fractured by a blow against one of the wooden uprights of the framework. Orville, though at first believed to be perhaps fatally hurt, had miraculously escaped with what then appeared to be only a fractured left leg and four broken ribs. He never lost consciousness and his first concern was about Selfridge. (Not until twelve years later, after suffering severe pains, did Orville learn, from a careful X-ray examination in a famous medical clinic, that the Fort Myer accident had also caused three fractures in the hip bones, besides a dislocation of one of them.)

Now that an airplane passenger had been killed, the Fort Myer demonstrations at last reached the front pages of newspapers.

The day after the accident, the mechanics, Taylor and Fumas, brought the broken propeller and some of the other broken parts to Orville’s bedside. From these parts he was able to determine the cause of the accident. A new pair of propellers, several inches longer than any previously used, had been installed just before the flight. The trouble started when a longitudinal crack developed in one blade of the right propeller. This crack permitted the blade to flatten and lose much of its thrust, with the result that the pressures on the two blades became unequal, causing a severe vibration of the propeller shaft housing. The vibration loosened one of the stay wires that held in position the tube in which the propeller shaft turned. Then the propeller began to swing sidewise and forward until a blade hit and tore loose the stay wire to the vertical tail, permitting the tail to take a nearly horizontal position. A pressure on the tail’s underside lifted the rear of the machine, thus causing it to dart for the ground.

While Orville was recovering from his injuries, an acquaintance, C. H. Claudy, visited him and asked:

“Has it got your nerve?”

“Nerve?” repeated Orville, not quite understanding. “Oh, you mean will I be _afraid_ to fly again? The only thing I’m afraid of is that I can’t get well soon enough to finish those tests next year.”

The cost had been high, but one result of those incomplete tests was that widespread incredulity in the United States about the Wrights’ achievements now finally ceased. At last, everyone, including even the most skeptical scientists, was convinced that a practical flying-machine was a reality.

XV

WHEN WILBUR WRIGHT WON FRANCE

Wilbur Wright reached France in May, 1908, to fly the Wright machine that for a year had been in its crate at the customs warehouse in Le Havre. If he accomplished what he expected, final details of the Wrights’ business arrangement with the recently formed French syndicate would be carried out.

As during the previous stay, when both the Wright brothers were in Europe, Wilbur kept in close touch with Hart O. Berg, European associate of Charles R. Flint & Co., the Wrights’ business representatives in all except the English-speaking countries. One of the first questions to be settled was where the actual demonstration of the Wright plane should take place. Naturally, there were not yet any areas in Europe designated as flying fields.

The locality for the flights was determined in consequence of the courtesies of Léon Bollée, an automobile manufacturer, who had a factory at Le Mans, about 125 miles from Paris.[12] When Bollée learned that Wilbur Wright was in France and looking for a suitable field, he sent a message to Wilbur suggesting that a satisfactory place could doubtless be found near Le Mans where there was a great stretch of level country. He added that Wilbur would be welcome to use a wing of the Bollée factory for assembling his plane. Wilbur Wright and Hart O. Berg took a train to Le Mans where they spent several hours “looking for a good pasture.” The most nearly ideal field for their purpose was a large open area at Auvours, about five miles from Le Mans, used by the French war department for testing artillery; but it was not then available. Another place they noticed was the Hunaudières race track. The oval field within the track appeared to be large enough for their needs. There were a few trees, but Wilbur said he could easily steer clear of them. The next day, in Paris, M. Nicolai, president of the Jockey Club and principal owner of the Hunaudières race track, agreed to the use of the field, at a monthly rental, for as long as needed.

Now the crated Wright plane was shipped from Le Havre to the Bollée factory and, late in June, Wilbur set to work there. He assembled the working parts and put the motor and cooling system to a series of rigid tests. On July 4 Wilbur met with a painful accident. A rubber connection in the cooling system burst and he was badly scalded on his left arm by hot water. This was one of several unavoidable delays that made many skeptics think it would be a long time before Wilbur would attempt a public demonstration. One Paris newspaper said: “_Le bluff continue_.” Wilbur had been quoted as saying that the tests would be “child’s play,” and “_jeu d’enfant_” was often repeated, with sarcasm, by the incredulous.

Painful as his burns were, Wilbur saw a funny side to the accident and sent home a hilarious letter about the French doctor who came “with a keg of oil” to apply to the blisters.

Shortly afterward, Wilbur wanted a coiled wire spring to insert in a hose used in the cooling system, to prevent the hose from collapsing from suction. A French mechanic who had been assisting him went with him to a near-by factory to have the coil made. Not knowing any French, Wilbur could not follow the long conversation he overheard, but they came away without the coil. It seemed strange to Wilbur that the kind of wire needed should not have been easily obtainable and he spoke of this to the man who had been his interpreter.

But, said the Frenchman, the wire _was_ available.

“Then,” asked Wilbur, in surprise, “why didn’t we get it?”

Oh, explained the Frenchman, because when he and the man at the factory talked it over it didn’t seem to them that using a coiled wire spring in the way Wilbur had in mind was a sound idea!

While working on his machine at the Bollée factory, Wilbur did something, probably just because it seemed the natural thing to do, with no thought of the impression it would make, that delighted the hearts of the factory employees. He kept the same hours that the others did and his whole behavior was as if he were simply one more workman. When the whistle blew for the noon hour, he knocked off along with the others, and went, in overalls, to lunch. This lack of any sign of aloofness caused much favorable comment.

Wilbur’s greatest admirer, however, was Léon Bollée himself. Though they had no common language, they managed to exchange ideas and formed a warm friendship. Bollée, a jolly rotund man with a saucy little beard, was ever ready to be of any service. Incidentally, though Bollée had no thought of personal gain when he generously offered the use of space in his factory, the fact that Wilbur worked on his plane there did not hurt the sale of Bollée cars.

But the work was soon transferred from the Bollée factory to the field at Hunaudières where a hastily constructed hangar had been built. Another item of preparation was the setting up of a launching derrick, similar to the one the Wrights had first used in their experiments at the Huffman pasture. Huge weights were attached at one end of a rope which ran over pulleys and had a metal ring at the other end to be caught on a hook at the front of the plane. When the plane shot forward, the rope automatically dropped away. As at previous trials, the plane when ready to take off rested on a small truck having two flanged wheels that ran on a single-rail, iron-shod, wooden track, about sixty feet long.

Not until August 8, did Wilbur attempt his first flight. A good-sized crowd was present, the majority from Le Mans and the near-by countryside, but it included many members of the Aéro Club of France and various newspaper representatives from Paris.

In describing the scene, years afterward, Hart O. Berg said: “Wilbur Wright’s quiet self-confidence was reassuring. One thing that, to me at least, made his appearance all the more dramatic, was that he was not dressed as if about to do something daring or unusual. He, of course, had no special pilot’s helmet or jacket, since no such garb yet existed, but appeared in the ordinary gray suit he usually wore, and a cap. And he had on, as he nearly always did when not in overalls, a high, starched collar.”

At least one man among the spectators felt certain the flight would not be a success. That was M. Archdeacon, prominent in the Aéro Club. So sure was M. Archdeacon that Wilbur Wright would be deflated that, as the time set for the flight approached, he was explaining to those near him in the grandstand just what was “wrong” about the design of the Wright machine, and why it could not be expected to fly well.

Wilbur’s immediate preparations had been made with great care. First of all, the starting rail had been set precisely in the direction of and against the wind. The engine was started by two men, each pulling down a blade of the two propellers and the plane was held back by a wire attached to a hook and releasing trigger near the pilot’s seat. After the engine was warmed up, Fleury, Berg’s chauffeur, took hold of the right wing. Wilbur released the trigger and the plane was pulled forward by the falling weights. Fleury kept it in balance until the accelerating speed left him behind. By the time it had reached the end of the rail, the plane left the track with enough speed to sustain itself and climb.

At some distance, directly in front of Wilbur as he started to rise, were tall trees, but they gave him no concern. He bore off easily to the left and went ahead in a curve that brought him back almost over the starting point. Then he swung to the right and made another great turn. Most of the time he was thirty or thirty-five feet above the ground. He was in the air only one minute and forty-five seconds, but he had made history.

The crowd knew well they had “seen something” and behaved accordingly. In the excited babel of voices one or two phrases could be heard again and again. “_Cet homme a conquis l’air!_” “_Il n’est pas bluffeur!_” Yes, truly Wilbur had conquered the air, and he was no bluffer. That American word “bluffer” had been much used during the time that reports from the United States about the Wrights had been stirring controversy in France. Now “_bluffeur_” became, more than ever, a part of the French language. “To think that one would call the Wrights ‘_bluffeurs_’!” lamented the French press over and over again.

For the next few minutes after Wilbur landed, Berg was kept busy laughingly warding off agitated Frenchmen who sought to bestow a formal accolade by kissing Wilbur in the French manner on both cheeks. He suspected that Wilbur might consider that carrying enthusiasm too far.

One of the skeptical members of the Aéro Club, Edouard Surcouf, a balloonist, had arrived at the field late, barely in time to see Wilbur in the air. Now he was about the most enthusiastic of all. He rushed up to Berg, exclaiming: “_C’est le plus grand erreur du siècle!_” Disbelieving the claims of the Wrights may not have been the biggest error of the century, but obviously it _had_ at least been a mistake.

The only person who offered criticism or minimized the brilliance of his feat was Wilbur Wright. When asked by a reporter for the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ if he was satisfied with the exhibition, he replied, according to that paper: “Not altogether. When in the air I made no less than ten mistakes owing to the fact that I have been laying off from flying so long; but I corrected them rapidly, so I don’t suppose anyone watching really knew I had made any mistake at all. I was very pleased at the way my first flight in France was received.”

A crowd of Aéro Club members and other admirers were insistent that Wilbur should go back to Paris with them to celebrate the achievement at the best dinner to be obtained in that center of inspired cooking. But Wilbur just thanked them and said he wished to give his machine a little going over. Early that evening, so the newspapers reported, “he was asleep at the side of his creation.”

The French press the next day not only treated the flight as the biggest news, but was unsparing in its praise, as were various rivals in the field of aviation who were quoted. All admitted that there was a world of difference between the best French plane yet produced and the one Wilbur Wright had just demonstrated. The _Figaro_ said: “It was not merely a success but a triumph; a conclusive trial and a decisive victory for aviation, the news of which will revolutionize scientific circles throughout the world.” _Le Journal_ observed that: “It was the first trial of the Wright airplane, whose qualities have long been regarded with doubt, and it was perfect.”

Louis Bleriot, member of the Aéro Club, wealthy manufacturer of automobile headlights, and himself a flyer, was quoted in _Le Matin_ as saying: “The Wright machine is indeed superior to our airplanes.”

As early as May, 1908, when the Wrights were still at Kitty Hawk, the Frenchman, Henri Farman, had issued a challenge to them to participate in a flying contest, for $5,000--later raised to $10,000. But the challenge, made only in public prints, was never sent directly to the Wrights. It may have been simply what today would be called a “publicity stunt.” (Farman’s best straightaway flight of about a mile and a quarter had been made at Issy, France, on March 21, 1908.) Nothing more was heard of the Farman challenge now. A French paper commented that the Farman plane and also that of Léon Delagrange were approximate copies of the Wright plane but that the Wright machine “seems more solid, more controllable, and more scientific.”

Two days after that first demonstration, on August 10, Wilbur made two more short flights, the first one a figure eight, and the other, three complete circles. He flew on August 11 for 3 minutes 43 seconds; the next day, 6 minutes 56 seconds; and on August 13, 8 minutes 13.2 seconds. This time he did seven wide “_orbes_,” as the French described them. In landing that day Wilbur broke the left wing of his plane and repairs kept him from flying until August 21. He took time out on August 24 to attend an agricultural fair where reporters observed that he seemed much interested in pigs and cattle and, as one paper expressed it, “talked much more freely about them than about aviation.”

After those first few flights, the army officer in charge of the artillery testing grounds at Auvours let it be known that the military people at Paris would be proud to have Wilbur Wright’s further demonstrations carried on there. As the military field was larger than that at Hunaudières, Wilbur was glad to make the change. The Hunaudières hangar--which Wilbur persisted in calling the “shed”--was torn down and rebuilt within twenty-four hours at Auvours. As the two fields were only about ten miles apart, Wilbur could have flown the plane to the new location; but with so much at stake he was taking no chances. The plane was placed longitudinally on two wheels fastened behind Léon Bollée’s automobile and towed to the Auvours field without removing the wings. Within a month after setting up operations at Auvours, Wilbur was flying many times the distance between the two fields.

All parts of France were now flooded with souvenir post cards bearing pictures of Wilbur or of his plane in flight. And the French people gave him all the hero-worship of which they were capable. There was talk of a public subscription for a testimonial to him. When the French ambassador to the United States reached New York a short time later he declared that Wilbur Wright was accepted as the biggest man in France. It wasn’t alone his achievements in the air that won the people, but also his modesty, decency, and intelligence. The French papers made enthusiastic comment on the fact that in conversation he seemed to be exceptionally well informed not only about scientific work, but also on art, literature, medicine, and affairs of the world.

Newspapermen liked Wilbur because he always made it plain that they were welcome. They probably liked him all the more because, as a joke, he usually put them at manual work, to fetch tools, or help drag the plane in and out of the hangar.

Those who had access to the hangar were impressed by the orderliness of the place. Wilbur’s canvas cot was hauled up by ropes toward the roof during the day, and the space where he slept was divided from another section of the building by a low partition made of wood from packing cases. Wilbur explained that one room was his bedroom, the other his dining-room. Another trait that appealed to the French was Wilbur’s punctuality at all appointments. No one ever had to wait even a minute on him.

Nothing Wilbur was overheard to say by French journalists seemed too trivial to be recorded. One day he said “fine” to an assistant, by way of commendation, and the next day a Paris paper explained that Wilbur meant “_C’est beau_.” “Boys, let’s fix these ropes” was promptly translated as “_Allons, jeunes gens, allez disposer les cordes_.”

Wilbur was flooded with letters of all kinds. Some were from scientists seeking information, and hundreds came from women who desired to make his acquaintance. He tried his best to answer all sensible questions from scientists; the others went into the stove. He was equally considerate of scientific-minded people--including those who might be considered rivals in aviation--who came in person. To all who had real interest he patiently explained any detail of his machine. But he was capable of quiet sarcasm toward the ill-informed who started to enlighten him about aerodynamics.

It now became the fashionable thing for Parisians to take a train down to Le Mans and drive from there to the Champ d’Auvours to see Wilbur fly. Amusing episodes grew out of that. Since the flights were not often announced in advance, those who made the sight-seeing trip had to take their chances. But some of the callers felt almost a personal affront if Wilbur made no flight on the day they happened to be there. One American society woman living in Paris was bitterly resentful when she was told that Monsieur Wright was taking a nap and therefore would not fly that afternoon. “The idea,” said she, petulantly, “of his being asleep when I came all the way down here to see him in the air!”

Cabmen at Le Mans found the sudden influx of visitors so profitable that they tried to make the most of it and encouraged people who had been disappointed to come again the next day. They would always say: “He is sure to fly tomorrow. We have it on good authority.”

So grateful to Wilbur were members of the “Le Mans-Auvours Aeroplane Bus Service” for the profitable trade he had created, that they wanted to give a banquet in his honor.

News of Wilbur’s flights at Le Mans naturally caused talk in England. Members of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, one after another, went to Le Mans in doubt about the flights being as wonderful as reported, but returned convinced that the age of practical flying-machines had come.

One of the first to go from England to investigate was Griffith Brewer, who had been making balloon ascensions since 1891. Half apologetically, lest he be thought over-credulous, he confided to an old associate of his in ballooning, Charles S. Rolls, founder of the Rolls-Royce motor car firm, that he was going to France to see Wilbur Wright fly. Rolls laughed and said he had just returned from seeing him fly.

On his arrival at Le Mans, Brewer walked to the shed at the edge of the field. Opposite the shed, in the middle of the field, was Wilbur Wright tuning up his machine. As a crowd was about Wilbur, Brewer hesitated to add to it, but sat down by the shed to smoke his pipe. When a mechanic came from the machine over to the shed for a tool, Brewer handed him a calling card with the request that he give it to Wilbur Wright. Wilbur glanced at the card, nodded to Brewer, and went on with his work. There was no flight, but it was some time before Wilbur returned to the shed; and as he stayed inside for what seemed a long time, Brewer began to think there might be an indefinite wait. Then Wilbur came out, putting on his coat, and said: “Now, Mr. Brewer, we’ll go and have some dinner.”

They went to Madame Pollet’s inn near by for a simple meal and Brewer, eager though he was to discuss aviation, wondered if the inventor might not appreciate a rest from the subject of flying. He therefore talked to him of affairs in America. Wilbur liked that, and they formed a friendship.

On September 12, Wilbur was guest of honor at a dinner in Paris given by the Aéro Club of the Sarthe (the governmental department in which Le Mans was located). It was understood that he would not be expected to make a speech, but Baron d’Estournelles, member of the Senate from Le Mans, who presided, did nevertheless call upon him. Wilbur then, in justification of his unwillingness to say much, made a remark that became famous.

“I know of only one bird, the parrot, that talks,” he was quoted as saying, “and it can’t fly very high.”

For the first time in France, Wilbur, on September 16, took up a passenger, a young French balloonist, Ernest Zens.

Two days later, in the early morning of September 18, as he was about to make a flight, Wilbur got word about the tragic accident at Fort Myer the day before, when Lieutenant Selfridge was killed and Orville Wright injured, it was not yet known how seriously.

Within a few hours cables brought word that Orville would recover, and Wilbur was able to fly again the next day. Two days later, on September 21, he flew about forty miles, in 1 hour 31 minutes 25.4 seconds. News of that proved to be better medicine for Orville, in Washington, than anything the attending physician could do.

Many passengers now made short flights with Wilbur. They included, on October 3, Mr. Dickin, of the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_, and Franz Reichel, of the Paris _Figaro_. Reichel was so enthusiastic over his flight of nearly an hour, that on landing he threw his arms about Wilbur.

Léon Bollée had his first flight on October 5, and the next day Arnold Fordyce flew with Wilbur for 1 hour 4 minutes and 26 seconds, the longest flight yet made in an airplane with a passenger.

Now that Wilbur was carrying much weight and on longer flights, the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ became impressed with future possibilities for carrying mail by plane. It predicted that the time might come when there would be special stamps for “aeroplane delivery.”

A witness to several of these flights in early October was Major B. F. S. Baden-Powell, President of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain (and a brother of the founder of the Boy Scouts). He was so impressed by what he saw that he sounded a warning to his fellow countrymen. Major Baden-Powell was quoted as follows in the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ on October 6, 1908:

If only some of our people in England could see or imagine
what Mr. Wright is now doing I am certain it would give them a
terrible shock. A conquest of the air by any nation means more
than the average man is willing to admit or even think about.
That Wilbur Wright is in possession of a power which controls
the fate of nations is beyond dispute.

Hart O. Berg, on October 7, went for a flight, his first, lasting three minutes and twenty-four seconds. Immediately afterward Wilbur took Mrs. Berg for a flight, of two minutes, three seconds, the first ever made anywhere in the world by a woman. (One or two women were reported to have been in planes that made short hops, but Mrs. Berg was certainly the first woman to participate in a real flight.)

Berg tied a rope about the lower part of his wife’s skirt to keep it from blowing. A Paris dressmaker who was among the spectators noted that Mrs. Berg could hardly walk, after landing, with that rope above her ankles. There, thought the _couturière_, was a suggestion for something fashionable. A costume with skirt thus drawn between the ankles and the knees to make natural locomotion difficult should appeal to any customers who happened to be both stupid and rich. Thus was born the “hobble skirt” which, for a short time, was considered “smart.”

The next day, October 8, her royal highness, Margherita, the dowager queen of Italy, who was touring France, came to see a flight.

“You have let me witness the most astonishing spectacle I have ever seen,” was her comment to Wilbur Wright.

On that same October 8, Griffith Brewer, making his second visit to Le Mans, won the distinction of being the first Englishman ever to fly. He was followed almost immediately by three other British Aeronautical Society members, C. S. Rolls, F. H. Butler, and Major Baden-Powell.

One of the Englishmen remarked: “How decent it is of Wilbur Wright never to accept a fee for any of these flights, when there are scores of persons who would gladly pay hundreds of pounds for the privilege.”

Wilbur continued until the end of the year to take up passengers at Auvours. Among them, on October 10, was M. Painlevé, of the French Institute. As they were taking off, M. Painlevé gaily waved his hand at the crowd and in so doing accidentally pulled a rope overhead that Wilbur used for stopping the engine. After another start, the flight lasted one hour, nine minutes, forty-five seconds, and covered forty-six miles, a world record for both duration and distance for an airplane carrying two persons. Two other women besides Mrs. Berg had short flights--Mesdames Léon Bollée and Lazare Weiller. A passenger on October 24 was Dr. Pirelli, leading tire manufacturer in Italy. Later, in November, F. S. Lahm, one of the first in Europe to believe the Wrights had flown, had his first ride in a plane. Among the distinguished people who made passenger flights were two destined to die by assassins’ bullets: Paul Doumer, member of the French parliament, afterward President of France; and Louis Barthou, Minister of Public Works and Aerial Communications, afterward Premier.

Under the terms of the contract between the Wrights and the newly formed French company, one of the Wright brothers was to train three pilots. Wilbur began this training at Auvours. The students were Count Charles de Lambert, Paul Tissandier, and Captain Lucas de Girardville. Both Tissandier and de Lambert had made flights as passengers on September 28, but did not begin their training until later. Captain Lucas de Girardville went up as a passenger for the first time on October 12. The first to receive a lesson at piloting was Count de Lambert on October 28.

The Aéro Club of France had offered a prize of 2,500 francs for an altitude of twenty-five meters. But there was a “catch” to that offer. A little clique in the Aéro Club, a bit over-chauvinistic, wanted a native experimenter to win, and that was why the altitude to be attained was fairly low. It was stipulated that anyone competing for the prize must start without use of derrick or catapult. The French experimenters had wheels on their machines and could get as long a start as necessary before leaving the ground. But the Wright machine, designed for the rough, sandy ground at Kitty Hawk, and the somewhat bumpy Huffman field, still had skids instead of wheels. Thus the rules for the contest seemed to be aimed to prevent Wilbur Wright from winning the prize. Members of the Aéro Club of the Sarthe thought their compatriots in the Aéro Club of France were being unsportsmanlike, and they offered a prize of 1,000 francs for an altitude record of thirty meters. Wilbur won it on November 13. In doing so he went three times as high as required, reaching an altitude of ninety meters. Then Wilbur decided that he might as well win the prize of the Aéro Club of France, and do so on their own terms. He arranged for a longer starting track than usual, and, five days after taking the prize for thirty meters, he started without the use of derrick or catapult and won the prize for twenty-five meters. To the delight of his friends in the Aéro Club of the Sarthe, he purposely did not throw in much altitude for good measure and went only high enough to clear safely the captive balloon that showed the height required.

On December 16, Wilbur astounded the spectators by shutting off the motor at an altitude of about 200 feet and volplaning slowly down. And on December 18, he flew for 1 hour 54 minutes 53.4 seconds. Later that same day he won another prize offered by the Aéro Club of the Sarthe for an altitude of a hundred meters. Wilbur went ten meters higher than required. This was a new world’s record for altitude. Then on December 31, the last day he ever flew at Auvours, he made what was then an almost incredible record of staying continuously in the air 2 hours 20 minutes 23.2 seconds. For this feat he won the Michelin award of $4,000, or 20,000 francs.

As the weather at Le Mans was no longer ideal for flying, it was necessary to seek a warmer climate, and at the suggestion of Paul Tissandier, Wilbur decided to go to Pau, a beautiful winter resort city of 35,000, at the edge of the Pyrenees. The city of Pau provided a field and a hangar.[13]

At about the same time, Orville Wright, now rapidly recuperating from his injuries at Fort Myer, arrived in Paris with their sister, Katharine, for a reunion with Wilbur. Then Wilbur went on down to Pau, and his brother and sister joined him there a week or two later. En route to Pau, their train met with an accident near the town of Dax, in which two persons were killed. The Wrights escaped injury, but Orville was a bit startled for another reason. When the crash came, his mattress tipped up on one side at the same time that his watch, pocketbook and other articles slid off a stand or shelf beside the bed. His valuables thus got themselves hid beneath the mattress and, until he chanced to find them, it looked as if he had been robbed.

As at Le Mans, Wilbur lived at the hangar, where he had a French cook the hospitable Mayor de Lassence, of Pau, had selected. His brother and sister lived at the Hotel Gassion, not far from the famous old château where Henry IV was born, and within a short stroll from the Place near the center of the city that affords what Lamartine has called the finest land view in all the world. The Wrights were not long in discovering that life here should be ideal. Wilbur’s French cook proved to be competent enough at preparing regional and other choice dishes--though Katharine Wright did not think he had quite the best technique with a broom for keeping the quarters clean. A London newspaper photographer gave Orville a photograph of his sister demonstrating to that Frenchman how to handle a broom.

By coming to Pau the Wrights had unintentionally played a joke on James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York _Herald_ and Paris _Herald_. A few years previously, when Bennett was spending the winter there, he had a tally-ho party and someone in the party had attracted the attention of the police. The episode was reported in local newspapers. Bennett was so indignant that he laid down a rule for both his papers to say as little as possible about Pau. But now, with Wilbur Wright flying there, the town could hardly be ignored. Pau date lines were again frequent in the Bennett papers.

Wilbur did not attempt any new records at Pau, but devoted most of his time to teaching the young pilots for the French Wright company.

Count Charles de Lambert continued his training, and his wife, almost equally enthusiastic over aviation, made a passenger flight. Another woman to make a flight at Pau was Katharine Wright herself. It was her first trip in a plane, though, as she laughingly remarked, she had _heard_ plenty about aviation.

An American multi-millionaire from Philadelphia, spending some time at Pau, announced, with the self-confidence money sometimes gives, that he intended to make a flight with Wilbur. When told that Wilbur was not taking up any passengers, he replied: “Oh, I daresay that can be arranged.”

“I’d like to be around when you do the arranging, just to see how it’s done,” observed Lord Northcliffe, owner of the London _Daily Mail_, who had recently arrived and become acquainted with the Wrights. The American went away without having had his ride.

In February, King Alfonso of Spain came to Pau with his entourage, and the Wrights were formally presented to him at the field. “An honor and a pleasure to meet you,” said the king.

Alfonso showed more boyish enthusiasm about the plane than almost anyone. He was eager to fly, but both his queen and his cabinet had exacted a promise that he would not. However, he climbed aboard the plane and sat there for a long time fascinated while Wilbur painstakingly explained every detail.

A little later, on March 17, still another king arrived. Edward VII of England came by automobile with his suite from near-by Biarritz. The presentation of the brothers and their sister was made at the field and Edward showed his customary graciousness. He did not seek any technical details about the machine, but was much interested in seeing the flights themselves and in meeting the Wrights.

It was during the stay of King Edward that Miss Katharine Wright made her second trip in an airplane.

Other famous personages continued to come to Pau, among them Lord Arthur Balfour, former Prime Minister of England. Sometimes when Wilbur was preparing for a flight, visitors would pull on the rope that raised the weights on the launching derrick. Balfour insisted that he must not be denied this privilege of “taking part in a miracle” and did his share of yanking at the rope. Another man who shared in handling the rope that day was a young English duke.

“I’m so glad that young man is helping with the rope,” said Lord Northcliffe to Orville Wright, with a motion of his head toward the duke, “for I’m sure it is the only useful thing he has ever done in his life.”

Northcliffe, after his meeting with the Wrights at Pau, became one of their most enthusiastic supporters in England.

Long afterward, he publicly made this comment:

“I never knew more simple, unaffected people than Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine. After the Wrights had been in Europe a few weeks they became world heroes, and when they went to Pau their demonstrations were visited by thousands of people from all parts of Europe--by kings and lesser men, but I don’t think the excitement and interest produced by their extraordinary feat had any effect on them at all.”

XVI

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN 1909

Shortly after they were established at Pau, the Wrights received a call from a German, Captain Alfred Hildebrandt. This was not the first time he had tried to see them. He had stopped in Dayton, on his way homeward after attending the international balloon races at St. Louis, in 1907; but on reaching Dayton he learned that the Wrights were in Europe. Captain Hildebrandt came to Pau on behalf of a newspaper publisher. His principal was Herr Scherl, owner of the _Lokal Anzeiger_, a leading paper in Berlin. Scherl thought it would be a great stroke of advertising for his paper if he could arrange for a big public demonstration of a Wright machine, with the general public invited to be the paper’s guests. It was arranged that one of the Wrights should make a series of flights at Berlin, later that year, for a substantial fee. The brothers later decided that the Berlin flights should be made by Orville.

A move had been started in Italy to have demonstrations of the Wright plane in Rome. Dr. Pirelli, Italian tire manufacturer, who had flown with Wilbur Wright at Le Mans, was believed to have made the first suggestion that led to organizing an aviation club at Rome to buy a Wright plane. This “club” was supposed to be backed at least partly by the Italian Government, and the arrangement with the Wrights provided for the training of two lieutenants, one from the Navy, the other from the Army.

Parts and material for six new planes had already been shipped to Europe from Dayton, and the parts for one of these were sent to Pau, where they were built into a complete machine. The machine was then taken down in sections and shipped to Rome. (The one used in the French flights became the personal property of Lazare Weiller, organizer of the French Wright company, and later it went to a museum in Paris.)

In April the Wrights returned from Pau to Paris, and after a brief stay there Wilbur went to Rome. He was joined there later by Orville and Katharine, who went to a hotel opposite the Barberini Palace. Count and Countess di Celleri, of the Italian nobility, had a cottage adjoining their villa near the flying field at Centocelle, and they offered it to Wilbur. Countess di Celleri later felt more than repaid when she had a passenger flight in the Wright plane.

When the machine shipped from Pau in sections arrived in Rome it was reassembled in an automobile factory, just outside the city limits, on the Flaminian Way. It was then moved across the city on a truck drawn by a magnificent team of gray horses to a military field in Centocelle. As the strange-looking machine was carried through Roman streets past ancient ruins, it is doubtful if amazed beholders had ever seen a greater contrast between old and new.

Almost immediately after his arrival, Wilbur began the training of the Italian flyers, naval Lieutenant Calderara and Lieutenant Savoia, of the army engineering corps. (Calderara was afterward the air attaché at the Italian Embassy in Washington; and Lieutenant Savoia became the head of the well-known Italian aviation company of that name.)

King Victor Emmanuel came to witness flights. As he strolled about the field with a folding camera suspended from his shoulder, he might have been mistaken for just one more tourist. Other sightseers who came to the field were the elder J. P. Morgan and the famous railroader, James J. Hill. Among those who made flights with Wilbur were Lloyd Griscom, the American Ambassador, and Sonnino, former Premier of Italy. Soon after that, for the first time, an operator took a motion picture from an airplane in flight.

While at Rome the Wrights established friendship with another German, Captain von Kehler, whom they had already met in Berlin, and he played an important part in steps toward forming a Wright company in Germany.

Captain von Kehler was managing director of the Studien Gesellschaft, an organization for the study of aeronautics, that had been formed after a meeting between certain outstanding German industrialists and the Kaiser, back in 1906. The Kaiser had called the representatives of the Krupps and other powerful industrialists to Potsdam to give them a big banquet at the close of which he said he thought Germany should be looking into the possibilities of the development of the airship (lighter-than-air). Just what should be done he did not pretend to know. That problem, he said, he would turn over to them. They knew what he meant. They, as a patriotic duty, must provide money for research and experimentation in the lighter-than-air field or else lose standing with their Kaiser. Thus did the Studien Gesellschaft come into being. The organization began experiments by building a dirigible known as the Parseval, named for its designer, Major Parseval. The Parseval turned out to be an expensive experiment. At the end of two years the subscribed funds were nearly exhausted and the project far from completion. The subscribers began to fear another invitation to dinner. Just at this time they began to hear reports about the aeroplane flights of the Wrights in France, and they became much interested. It occurred to them that experiments with the new flying-machine would perhaps be less expensive than experiments with a dirigible, and that prospects for the aeroplane might be greater than for the dirigible.

Captain von Kehler went to Rome to talk with the Wrights. He told them that some of the wealthy men in the Studien Gesellschaft would like to form a German Wright company. Before he left Rome, a preliminary contract was signed. Its terms provided that the brothers should receive cash, a block of stock in the company, and ten per cent royalty on all planes sold. The final contract was closed in August, 1909.

After leaving Rome the Wrights made a brief stay in Paris and went to Le Mans to receive a bronze art piece presented by the Aéro Club of the Sarthe. The work in bronze, by Louis Carvin, showed the Wright brothers at the edge of a chasm gazing upon an eagle in flight. Above them was a winged figure--the spirit of aviation.

From France the Wrights went to London. There they received gold medals from the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain and from the Aero Club of the United Kingdom at formal banquets. Before going to these dinners Griffith Brewer was describing to Wilbur some of the people he would meet. Of one man he said: “You’ll readily recognize him, as he is the ugliest man in the Aeronautical Society.” To which Wilbur replied: “He’ll lose that distinction on this occasion, because now there will be a pair of us.”