Part 19

Kitty Hawk, the place the Wrights had chosen because the Weather Bureau had told them the winds were strongest and steadiest there, now became one of the chief foci of the world’s attention. The Wrights, still quiet and unassuming, suddenly jumped into fame. The public could not understand how these two men, bicycle-makers of Dayton, had learned so much about airships. They did not appreciate that the brothers had mastered every detail of flight long before, that they had learned the fundamental principles of soaring and floating, diving and rising, circling and gliding, before they attached the first motor to their planes. They had been far more thorough and more resourceful than those Europeans who had for some time experimented with aviation. Henri Farman, who had caused a sensation in Europe by flying a kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) over a circular course on January 13, 1908, came to this country, and heard what the United States government was requiring in the tests. “I have done some flying,” said he, “but I do not try to do what your inventors must do at Fort Myer. I never fly in winds. Once I had a spill in France when I attempted it.”

The government trials were held at Fort Myer, outside Washington. Here the Wrights took their machines when they were satisfied that they were in shape for the tests. Mr. Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America, has graphically described in _The World’s Work_ for October, 1909, his impression of Orville Wright’s flying in 1908. He says that Mr. Wright and he left Washington about six o’clock on a clear, still morning, bound for the flying field. “The conditions for flight were perfect,” he continues. “Mr. Taylor, Mr. Wright’s mechanic, got out the machine and it was placed on the starting-rail. The weights were raised, and Mr. Wright took his place. None of us expected anything more than a short flight down the field, with possibly a circle. The machine was released, and away he went, rising higher and higher, circling when he came to the end of the field and continuing round. I had taken the time of starting and marked on the back of an envelope each circle of the field. From a position of strained attention and fixed gaze, Mr. Wright gradually became more confident and comfortable; round and round he went for fully twenty minutes, and then we began to realize that something wonderful was taking place. Thirty minutes passed; we could hardly believe it. Mr. Taylor came up and said: ‘Don’t make a motion; if you do, he’ll come down’; and we all stood like statues, watching the flying man, every nerve as tense in our bodies as though we were running the machine ourselves. Mark after mark I made on the back of the old envelope--so many that I had lost track of the number; it seemed an age since the machine started, and it appeared to be fixed in the sky. We were impressed that it could circle on forever, or sail like a bird over the country, so positive and assuring and complete was this demonstration. We knew that the problem of flight by an aeroplane had been solved.”

An accident caused the flights to be suspended for a time, but a year later the Wrights were ready for the official endurance test, a flight of one hour, carrying a passenger. President Taft and a great audience were present. Lieutenant Lahm was the passenger. Signal Corps men raised the weight and fastened the end of the starting rope to the aeroplane. Wilbur Wright, at the rear, turned the propellers and started the motor. Orville Wright adjusted the spark, and took his seat. He grasped the levers, spoke a few words of instruction to his passenger, seated beside him, and gave the word to release the machine. It glided down the track, gathering speed until it left the rails. Then the forward planes rose, and the plane soared into the air, flying swiftly. It circled around and around, each circle taking about one minute. For the first ten minutes the motor did not move smoothly, but after that it settled to perfection. The great audience, watches in hand, kept their eyes on the airship. The hour mark was passed, and there were wild shouts of applause and encouragement. Then the plane broke the world’s record of one hour, nine minutes, and forty seconds, that Wilbur Wright had made earlier in the year. Wilbur Wright led in a cheer to those circling above. Then the airship began to descend, taking the circles easily, and finally skimming down to the ground. The motor was shut off, and the test was ended, the machine having flown for one hour, twelve minutes, and forty seconds. President Taft crossed the field and shook Orville Wright’s hand. “I am glad to congratulate you on your achievement,” said he; “you came down as gracefully and as much like a bird as you went up. I hope your passenger behaved himself and did not talk to the motorman. It was a wonderful performance; I would not have missed it.” Then he turned to shake hands with Wilbur Wright. “Your brother has broken your record.” “Yes,” said the other, smiling, “but it’s all in the family.”

Lieutenant Lahm said, “The machine was under perfect control at all times. He apparently had given no conscious thought either to his hands or to the levers. His actions all seemed involuntary. It had hardly started on one of its dips before his hands were moved in the proper direction to restore the balance. It seemed impossible for anything to go wrong. I never knew an hour to pass so quickly as that one up in the air. The first half seemed like ten minutes, and the second scarcely longer. I hardly felt the vibrations of the engine, but at first the rising and dipping were hard to get used to. The only disagreeable sensation I experienced was a deafness from the whirring motor. Sometimes the undulating movement was noticeable, but that was all. The sensation of riding the air in an aeroplane is indescribable.”

The speed test came on the day following the endurance flight. This was to be made over a measured course of five miles from Fort Myer to Alexandria, and back, making a total flight of ten miles over trees, railroads, and rough country. Aviators declared this a more difficult course than the crossing of the English Channel, owing to the great rises and drops of the land, which made it almost impossible to maintain a level course. Speed was a very important factor in the government’s specifications for a successful airship, and the price to be paid depended on this, which had been calculated to be forty miles an hour. The government was to pay the Wrights $25,000 for the airship, and a bonus of ten per cent., or $2,500, for every mile made above the forty. For every mile less, to the minimum limit of thirty-six miles an hour, the government was to deduct the same percentage.

The machine that was making these tests was very similar to the one that had been used at Fort Myer the year before. The amount of supporting surface had been reduced by about eighty square feet, and a change had been made in the lever that turned the rudder and controlled the equilibrating device. This had originally consisted of two levers, placed side by side. Now the top of one lever was jointed, so that a sideways movement of the wrist was sufficient to move the rudder for steering in the horizontal plane. Simultaneously the lever could be pushed forward and pulled back to lift or lower the opposite tips of the wings. In this way one hand could control both the steering and the balancing of the planes.

In spite of the fact that the wind conditions were not exactly as he wished Orville Wright decided to make the flight for speed on that day. He made a good ascension, carrying Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois with him as passenger. Twice he circled the field in order to get up speed and reach sufficient elevation. Then, amid cheers of encouragement from the immense throng that was watching, he turned sharply past the starting-tower and flew between the flags that marked the starting-line. Two captive balloons had been floated to show the course and also to give an indication of the proper altitude to maintain. The wind tended to carry the aeroplane to the east, but Orville Wright was able to hold it on a fairly even course, and to reach the balloon at Shuter’s Hill that marked the turning point. Here the official time was taken by officers of the Signal Corps. On the return the airship met with strong downward currents of air that bore it groundward until it was hidden by the tops of trees. Mr. Wright said afterward, “I had to climb like forty all the way back.” But he managed to send his aeroplane higher and higher, and to bring it back over the heads of the crowds at the finish line. There it swept about in a circle, and landed easily near the aeroplane shed. What aeronautical authorities declared to be the greatest feat in the history of aviation had been successfully accomplished. The elapsed time of the flight was fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, which meant that the airship had attained a speed of a little more than forty-two miles an hour. The conditions of the Wrights’ contract with the government had been in every respect more than fulfilled.

The Wrights carried Europe by storm, being received there with even greater acclamations than in America. The French, as a nation, had for some time been more interested in aviation than any other people. France was the home of Montgolfier, Santos-Dumont, and Farman. At first France looked with incredulity and suspicion on the Wrights’ claims. The French papers accused them of playing _le bluff_, and said that “they argued a great deal and experimented very little,” which, as a matter of fact, was exactly the opposite of the Wrights’ whole history. But as soon as Wilbur Wright showed what he could actually do, all this changed, and the French could not say enough that was good about him. Delagrange, his nearest competitor, acknowledged frankly that Wilbur Wright was his superior as an aviator. But he could not understand the American’s quiet methods, and plan of pursuing his own way regardless of public opinion. He found that Wilbur Wright actually preferred to fly without an audience, and thought nothing of disappointing the crowds that gathered to watch him. On one such occasion, when Wilbur Wright found the weather conditions unsatisfactory, he declined to fly. “If it had been I,” said Delagrange, “I would have made a flight if I had been likely to smash up at three hundred meters rather than disappoint those ten thousand people.”

This novel charm of simplicity caught the French fancy. The Wrights wanted to do everything for themselves. At Kitty Hawk they had lived in a small shack, and cooked their own meals. Wilbur Wright had a similar shack built on his flying-field in France, and planned to do his own cooking. But this was too extreme for the French mind. When he went to his shack he found a native cook installed there, and had to submit to the hospitality of his hosts.

The Wrights were organizing companies in the different countries of Europe, and wanted to attend strictly to their business. But wherever they went they were fêted. They met the French President, the Kaiser, the King of England, and the King of Spain, and they were dined and publicly honored in all the great capitals. Germany turned from its native hero, Count Zeppelin, to admire them. But everywhere they kept that same quiet tone. They showed that they cared nothing to perform hazardous feats simply because of the hazard, nor to establish records. Wilbur Wright was asked if he would not try for the prize offered to the first man to fly across the English Channel. He said he would not at that time, because it “would be risky and would not prove anything more than a journey over land.” And the public knew that this was sensible caution, and not lack of courage.

Daring aviators sprang into fame at once. Most of these built their machines according to their individual ideas, and there was a great trying-out of different patterns. Blériot, a Frenchman, flew across the English Channel in a monoplane in thirty-eight minutes. Instantly he became the French idol. When he reached Paris at five in the morning an enormous crowd welcomed him, and the cries of “Vive Blériot!” could be heard for squares. He was dined at the Hôtel de Ville, given the Legion of Honor, and money was subscribed for a monument to mark the place near Calais where he commenced his flight. Shortly after Roger Sommer rose in the country outside Paris on a moonlight night, and flew for two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifteen seconds, the longest flight made to that time. The world recognized that the actual invention of the airship was one of the greatest achievements of the ages. Said the _London Times_, “It is no wonder that there should be great enthusiasm in France over the cross-Channel flight of M. Blériot, and that the French papers should talk of nothing else. Further enthusiasm will doubtless greet the gallant attempt, which was all but successful, of M. Latham yesterday, to repeat the achievement. Since the discovery of the New World no material event has happened on this earth so impressive to the imagination as the conquest of the air which is now half achieved. Indeed, the conquest of the air is likely to be more vast and bewildering in its results than even the discovery of the New World, and one is inclined to wonder that men should take it as calmly as they do.”

A great aviation week was held at Rheims, and almost all the world’s famous aviators, except the Wrights, were there. Control of the airships was shown to a remarkable degree. On one of the preparatory days three heavier than air machines were manœuvring in the great aerodrome at the same time. They were flying at high speed, when suddenly Glenn H. Curtiss, an American, saw an Antoinette aeroplane approaching him at right angles, and flying upon the same level. Instantly he elevated the planes of his machine, and his aeroplane obeyed his touch, shot upward, and flew over the Antoinette. There was great applause from those who had been watching him. The manœuvre showed how easily the airships were controlled.

Germany meantime was intensely interested in Count Zeppelin’s dirigible balloons, which, although as long as a battle-ship, had flown with great success. The German government paid $1,250,000 into the Zeppelin fund for experiments, and contributed a large sum in addition to the maintenance of a balloon corps. The German people showed themselves as proud of Count Zeppelin as the French were of Blériot, and the Americans of the Wrights.

The aviation week at Rheims was followed by other great airship meets in other countries. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York in the autumn of 1909 was the occasion of new records in flying, and served to awaken Americans to a more intense interest in navigation of the air. That meeting was followed by others in all parts of the United States, and competitions for height and city-to-city flights became matters of weekly occurrence. Yet America has not so far reached the intense enthusiasm over flying that fills the lands of Europe.

The airship is on the market, ready to be purchased by whomsoever will pay the price. The London daily papers advertise an agency that will supply buyers with either the Blériot monoplane of the type Calais-Dover, the Latham or Antoinette monoplane, or the Wright and Voisin biplanes. Moreover the art of handling the aeroplane does not seem unusually difficult to master, provided one has the taste for it. Roger Sommer first sat in an airship on July 3d, yet on August 7th following he made a world’s record flight outside Paris. “It is easier to learn to fly than it is to walk,” Wilbur Wright has said.

The only American machines besides the Wrights’ biplanes which have made a name for themselves are the Curtiss biplanes. Mr. Curtiss is one of the most daring aviators in the world, and his flight down the Hudson River attracted the widest attention. But there are questions as to whether his aeroplanes do not infringe on certain patent claims of the Wrights, and his flight was made under a bond that should protect the Wrights in case it proved later that his biplane did infringe on their title. Here it should be said that the Wrights are as excellent business men as they are inventors, and intend to receive due compensation for their years of work. At one time they offered to sell their invention outright for $100,000, but since then their patents have been upheld by the courts, and those patents cover a very large area of the field of airship manufacture. The American market is largely in their hands.

Every year lighter and lighter gas-engines are being made, and this means that the surplus carrying power of the aeroplane can be increased. Fuel can be carried for flights of greater and greater distances, and rapid increases of speed can be attained. With improvements in safety there seems no limit to the possibilities of flight. So far a long train of casualties has marked the airship’s progress. This was inevitable when men came to imitate the birds, and trust themselves to the fickle currents of the air. But many aviators have been drawn from a reckless class, and many accidents have been due to a desire to thrill an audience rather than to learn more about the laws of flight. The Wrights have held to the wise course. They care nothing for spectacular performances or establishing new records for their own glory. Their work is in the shops, devising improvements that will make the airship safer and better fitted for commercial uses. They are men of remarkable balance, and it was their quality of unremitting care that made them the wonder of Europe, used above all things else to the dramatic in men’s flights through air.

End of Project Gutenberg's Historic Inventions, by Rupert S. Holland