Part 10
Looking back over their experiments, the Wrights noted that “in 1903, 62 pounds per horsepower were carried at a speed of 30 miles an hour; in 1904, 53 pounds at 34 miles an hour; and in 1905, 46 pounds at 38 miles an hour.” Thus the weight carried per horsepower was in inverse ratio to the speed--the smaller the weight carried per horsepower, the higher the speed. That seems obvious enough now, but at the time the Wrights were making these experiments many scientists still accepted the “Langley Law,” that the greater the speed, the less horsepower necessary.
The Wrights now knew that the airplane would have practical use--though they did not foresee how safely trans-Atlantic flights would be made--and not even in their wildest dreams did they think of anyone ever flying at night.
IX
IT STILL WASN’T “NEWS”
Though Dayton newspapermen had not besieged the Huffman pasture for details of the great news story lurking there during 1904-’05, one of their number had occasionally been in contact with the Wrights. That was Luther Beard--no kin to the other Beards mentioned--managing editor of the Dayton _Journal_. Besides being a newspaper editor, Beard also taught school at Fairfield, about two miles from the Huffman farm, and went back and forth by the interurban car line that passed the field where the Wrights were making history. It sometimes happened that on the trip to Dayton he was on the same car with one or both of the Wright brothers, returning from their flights.
“I used to chat with them in a friendly way and was always polite to them,” Beard recalled, years afterward, chuckling over the joke on himself, “because I sort of felt sorry for them. They seemed like well-meaning, decent enough young men. Yet there they were, neglecting their business to waste their time day after day on that ridiculous flying-machine. I had an idea that it must worry their father.”
In these conversations, neither the Wrights nor Beard was likely to bring up the subject of aviation. The Wrights showed no eagerness to talk about what they were doing, and Beard kept to subjects he considered more sensible. But one day, in the autumn of 1904, several of the school children told him they had seen the Wrights flying all around the field. Maybe, thought Beard, that might make a little local item for the paper. When he next saw Orville Wright on the car, a day or two afterward, Beard asked him if it was true that they had been flying all the way around the field.
Oh, yes, Orville admitted, they often did that. Then Orville began to talk about something else.
Evidently, Beard decided, the fact that an airplane could be flown under perfect control in circles didn’t amount to anything after all. Orville Wright himself didn’t seem to think it was unusual or important. There was no use putting it in the paper. One more reason perhaps for not printing much in the _Journal_ about what the poor, misguided Wrights were doing was that such items were annoying to Frank Tunison, another of the editors--the same Tunison who had turned down the story of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. Having decided that the Wrights were not news, he was naturally irritated to see any reference to them, even on an inside page. “Why do we print such stuff?” he would ask.
However, Beard said to Orville, as they rode along on the car: “If you ever do something _unusual_ be sure and let us know.” From time to time he went or telephoned to the Wright home to find out if by remote chance the brothers had done anything worth mentioning.
“Done anything of special interest lately?” he asked Orville Wright one evening.
“Oh, nothing much,” replied Orville. “Today one of us flew for nearly five minutes.”
“Where did you go?” asked Beard.
“Around the field.”
“Oh! Just around the field. I see. Well, we’ll keep in touch with you.”
Doubtless, reflected the newspaperman, the Wrights’ circling of Mr. Huffman’s pasture for five minutes was pretty good for two local boys. But it was hardly a thing to take up space in the paper. Hadn’t Santos-Dumont circled the Eiffel Tower, and flown all around Paris? One more newspaper writer, like hundreds of others, had failed to distinguish between an airship with a gas bag and a flying-machine heavier than air. (At the time of the thirty-eight-minute flight in 1905, however, Luther Beard was among the spectators at the field.)
Another bright young newspaperman in that vicinity didn’t grasp quite the full significance of what the Wrights were doing. The Dayton _Journal_ had a branch office at Xenia, about eleven miles from where the Wrights did their flying. The reporter in charge of that branch office was an enterprising lad, just out of college, who answered to the name of Fred C. Kelly. His eagle eye spotted an item about the Wrights and their flying-machine in a country weekly, the Osborn _Local_, published in a village a mile or two from the Huffman field. Did he investigate the story? No, he didn’t need to investigate it to feel sure it must be nonsense.
The fact of human flight was still unacceptable and ridiculous even to professional humorists. The humorous weekly, _Puck_, in its issue of October 19, 1904--nearly a month after that first circular flight--published a joke, inspired presumably by absurd reports about two young men at Dayton:
“When,” inquired the friend, “will you wing your first flight?”
“Just as soon,” replied the flying-machine inventor, “as I can get the laws of gravitation repealed.”
The significance of the first complete circular flight, on September 20, 1904, was not overlooked, however, by one man who witnessed it. That was A. I. Root, the Medina bee man. He had traveled by automobile the day before to Xenia, where he had a relative, and then went to the Huffman field, only a few miles away, to become better acquainted with the Wrights. His trip of 175 miles from Medina without serious difficulty with his machine was then almost a feat in itself. He had not needed any repairs until he reached Xenia. (Incidentally, he had remonstrated with the repair man he dealt with there, Mr. Baldner, for his frequent use of profanity; and he was impressed by the fact that no matter how puzzling or discouraging the problem, the Wrights never uttered a profane word.) After going to Huffman field, Root became more than ever interested in the Wrights and as he wished to see all he could of their work for a few days, he arranged for board and lodging at the Beard home across the road. (A little later he even offered to pay the Wrights $100 for material he had obtained from them for articles about their work--but they refused to accept any payment.)
Root knew that the circular flight he had just witnessed was of prime importance, for it demonstrated that the airplane would have practical use. He wrote an eye-witness account of what the Wrights had done for the January 1 (1905) issue of his magazine, _Gleanings in Bee Culture_, and sent a marked copy to the editor of the _Scientific American_, with a letter telling the editor he was free to reprint the article. The editor wrote back that he had not received the marked copy. So Root sent another. But when the editor of the _Scientific American_ saw what Root had printed he paid no attention to it.
Root continued to print articles about the Wrights in his magazine. In December, 1905, he published the fact that a great number of long flights had been made during the previous season, “one of 24 miles in 38 minutes,” probably the first publication of that event in the United States. At about the same time, in its issue of December 16, 1905, the _Scientific American_ said, in an editorial headed “Retrospect for the Year”: “The most promising results (with the airplane) to date were those obtained last year by the Wright brothers, one of whom made a flight of over half a mile in a power-propelled machine.” Previously in the same editorial, though, was the assertion: “... the only successful ‘flying’ that has been done this year--must be credited to the balloon type.” By that time, the Wrights’ total flying distance was about 160 miles.
In its issue of January 13, 1906, in an article headed “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances,” the _Scientific American_ commented skeptically on a letter written by the Wright brothers which had been published in a Paris automobile journal. In that letter the Wrights had given details of the long flights of late September and early October, 1905. In expressing its disbelief in the “alleged” flights described in the Wright letter, the _Scientific American_ said: “If such sensational and tremendously important experiments are being conducted in a not very remote part of the country, on a subject in which almost everybody feels the most profound interest, is it possible to believe that the enterprising American reporter, who, it is well known, comes down the chimney when the door is locked in his face--even if he has to scale a fifteen-story skyscraper to do so--would not have ascertained all about them and published them broadcast long ago?”
A few weeks later, in February, 1906, the editor of the _Scientific American_ wrote to the Wrights to inquire if there was any truth in reports that they were negotiating with the French Government. He enclosed in his letter a clipping of “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances.”
The Wrights wrote in reply that since the _Scientific American_ obtained the data of what it termed “alleged experiments” directly from a published letter signed by the Wright brothers, and since it did not discredit the authenticity of the letter, but only the truthfulness of the statements, they were at a loss to understand why the editor should desire further statements from such a source. They did not answer the inquiry about the negotiations with the French Government.
Most of the long flights in late September and early October, 1905, had been seen by Amos Stauffer, a farmer working in an adjoining field. But he went right ahead husking corn. Another witness, however, was more of a gossip. At one of the October flights, William Fouts, a Dayton druggist, was present, and the Wrights cautioned him not to say anything about what he had seen. But Fouts must have taken a few people into his confidence. In the afternoon of October 5, the Dayton _Daily News_ had an article saying the Wrights were making sensational flights every day. The Dayton correspondent for the _Cincinnati Post_ reported this to his paper which printed it the next day. A fairly good-sized crowd then went to the Huffman pasture. But when they found nothing going on there most of them decided that the reports must have been much exaggerated. Nothing more was said about the Wrights in Ohio papers for some time. John Tomlinson, a reporter on the Dayton _Journal_, and correspondent for out-of-town papers, offered $50 to Henry Webbert, friend of the Wrights, to let him know the date of their next flight. There was one more short flight on October 16, but no newspapermen or other onlookers were at the field.
On March 12, 1906, the Wrights had sent to the Aero Club of America the following list of names of reputable men who had seen one or more of their flights: E. W. Ellis, assistant city auditor; Torrence Huffman, bank president; C. S. Billman, secretary, and W. H. Shank, treasurer of the West Side Building & Loan Association; William, Henry and Charles Webbert, in the plumbing business; Frank Hamburger, hardware dealer; Howard M. Myers, post-office employee; William Fouts and Reuben Schindler, druggists; William Weber, plumber; Bernard H. Lambers, of Dayton Malleable Iron Works. Besides those living in Dayton, were: O. F. Jamieson, traveling salesman, of East Germantown, Ohio; David Beard and Amos Stauffer, of Osborn; and Theodore Waddell, of the Census Bureau at Washington. The Wrights had a list of about sixty persons who had witnessed flights.
Those witnesses named in the published list got requests for confirmatory letters from the _Scientific American_ whose editor finally had decided that reports of what the Wrights had done might be worth looking into. Then, in the issue of April 7, 1906, the magazine reported the long flights of the previous autumn and quoted in full a letter from one of the witnesses. More than six months later, on November 21, 1906, the Aero Club itself wrote to the various persons named in the list received from the Wrights, asking for letters about the flights they had seen.
As late as October, 1906, the _Scientific American_ had devoted more than a column to a letter from J. C. Press, of South Norwalk, Connecticut, who presented arguments to justify his belief that “man may fly within a few years.” But, on the other hand, the letter-writer quoted the editor of _Collier’s Weekly_ as expressing “disbelief in even the ultimate possibility of flight.”
At last, however, in the issue of December 15, 1906, or nearly three years after the Wrights’ first flights, the _Scientific American_ printed an editorial which indicated that the editor was now becoming aware of the facts. The editorial said: “In all the history of invention, there is probably no parallel to the unostentatious manner in which the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, ushered into the world their epoch-making invention of the first successful aeroplane flying-machine.”
X
U. S. ARMY NOT INTERESTED
From the time that they knew their invention was practical, the Wrights wished to offer to their own government a world monopoly on all their patents and, still more important, all their secrets relating to the airplane. They thought it might be useful to the Army for scouting purposes. But as they had greater interest at first in learning more about flying and improving their machine than in making money out of it, they did not at once attempt negotiations with government officials at Washington. When they did make such an effort they received a rude shock. The United States Army not only didn’t believe there was any such device in existence as a practical flying-machine, but was not disposed to investigate.
At least one foreign government showed more awareness and more curiosity. In the autumn of 1904, the Wrights got a letter from Lieutenant Colonel J. E. Capper, of the Royal Aircraft Factory (a government experimental laboratory dealing with aeronautics) at Aldershot. He wrote on shipboard en route to the United States, and enclosed a note of introduction from another Englishman whom the Wrights knew, Patrick Y. Alexander, member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. (Alexander had called upon the Wrights at Dayton in 1902, with a letter of introduction from Octave Chanute.) Colonel Capper wanted to know if he might see the Wrights in Dayton when he returned eastward from a visit to the St. Louis Exposition. They told him they would be glad to see him and he came to Dayton, accompanied by his wife, in November.
Soon after his arrival, Colonel Capper frankly said that he was there at the request of his government. The Wrights told him of what they had accomplished during that previous season of 1904 at the Huffman field. Before leaving, Colonel Capper asked them to make his government some kind of proposal.
The Wrights made no haste about submitting a proposal to the British, but, on January 10, 1905, about two months after the Capper visit, they wrote to him asking if he was sure his government was receptive to an offer. In this letter they suggested that a government in possession of such a machine as they now could furnish, and the knowledge and instruction they could impart might have a lead of several years over governments which waited to buy a perfected machine before making a start in this line. The letter was signed: Wright Cycle Company.
Whatever the British Government might desire, the Wrights did not intend to take any steps that could prevent the United States Government from having opportunity to control all rights in their invention for the entire world; and before having any further word from the British it seemed wise to learn from Washington just what our own government might want. They wrote, on January 18, 1905, to their member of Congress from the Dayton district, R. M. Nevin, as follows:
The series of aeronautical experiments upon which we have been engaged for the past five years has ended in the production of a flying-machine of a type fitted for practical use. It not only flies through the air at high speed, but it also lands without being wrecked. During the year 1904 one hundred and five flights were made at our experimenting station, on the Huffman prairie, east of the city; and though our experience in handling the machine has been too short to give any high degree of skill, we nevertheless succeeded, toward the end of the season, in making two flights of five minutes each, in which we sailed round and round the field until a distance of about three miles had been covered, at a speed of thirty-five miles an hour. The first of these record flights was made on November 9th, in celebration of the phenomenal political victory of the preceding day, and the second, on December 1st, in honor of the one hundredth flight of the season.
The numerous flights in straight lines, in circles, and over “S”-shaped courses, in calms and in winds, have made it quite certain that flying has been brought to a point where it can be made of great practical use in various ways, one of which is that of scouting and carrying messages in time of war. If the latter features are of interest to our own government, we shall be pleased to take up the matter either on a basis of providing machines of agreed specification, at a contract price, or of furnishing all the scientific and practical information we have accumulated in these years of experimenting, together with a license to use our patents; thus putting the government in a position to operate on its own account.
If you can find it convenient to ascertain whether this is a subject of interest to our own government, it would oblige us greatly, as early information on this point will aid us in making our plans for the future.
Respectfully yours, WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT
Mr. Nevin forwarded the letter to the Secretary of War who turned it over to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification. That Board evidently regarded the letter simply as something for their “crank file.” They had received many proposals in the past from inventors of perpetual motion machines and flying-machines and had stock paragraphs to use in reply.
Their response to Nevin, signed by Major General G. L. Gillespie, of the General Staff, the President of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, said:
I have the honor to inform you that, as many requests have been made for financial assistance in the development of designs for flying-machines, _the Board has found it necessary to decline to make allotments for the experimental development of devices for mechanical flight_, and has determined that, before suggestions with that object in view will be considered, _the device must have been brought to the stage of practical operation_ without expense to the United States.
_It appears from the letter of Messrs. Wilbur and Orville Wright that their machine has not yet been brought to the stage of practical operation_, but as soon as it shall have been perfected, this Board would be pleased to receive further representations from them in regard to it.[6]
It will be noted, of course, that what the letter said bore almost no relation to anything the Wrights had written.
Having thus been brushed aside by their own government, the Wrights now might have been conscience clear to do as they saw fit with a foreign government. But nevertheless they determined that, no matter how public officials at Washington behaved, they would take no steps which could shut off their own government from use of the airplane if Army people ever got around to understanding the machine’s potential importance.
On February 11, 1905, the Wrights received a letter from the British War Office, asking them to submit terms, and March 1, without giving formal terms, they outlined in a general way what they were willing to do.
“Although we consider it advisable,” they wrote to the British War Office, “that any agreement which may be made at present be based upon a single machine and necessary instruction in its use, we would be willing, if desired, to insert in the contract an option on the purchase of all that we know concerning the subject of aviation ...
“We are ready to enter into a contract with the British Government to construct and deliver to it an aerial scouting machine of the aeroplane type ...”
Specifications included these: The machine to be capable of carrying two men of average weight, and supplies of fuel for a flight of not less than fifty miles; its speed, when flying in still air, to be not less than thirty miles an hour; the machine to be of substantial enough construction to make landings without being broken, when operated with a reasonable degree of skill.
Another provision was that the purchase price should be determined by the maximum distance covered in one of the trial flights; £500, or about $2,500 for each mile. If none of the trial flights was of at least ten miles, then the British Government would not be obligated to accept the machine.
There were further exchanges of letters between the Wrights and the British (altogether twenty-four letters in the years 1905–6), but the brothers began to suspect that the British were mainly interested in prolonging the negotiations as a means of keeping in touch and knowing what progress was being made in aviation. Probably, thought the Wrights, the British shrewdly foresaw that the flying-machine would not add to the isolation of the British Isles, and did not wish to hasten its development. But they doubtless wished to be well informed about whatever was happening in the conquest of the air.
The British War Office wrote on May 13, 1905, that they were asking Colonel H. Foster, their military attaché, in Washington, to call upon the Wrights at their “works”--meaning, presumably, at their shop--and to see their machine in flight.
The brothers were urged by their friend Octave Chanute on one of his visits to Dayton, to make another offer of their machine to the United States Army. Because of the treatment they had received from the War Department, the Wrights were naturally reluctant to expose themselves to further rebuffs, but Chanute was insistent that such behavior by Army people surely would not occur again. Thus prodded by Chanute, the Wrights, on October 9, 1905, wrote to the Secretary of War:
Some months ago we made an informal offer to furnish to the War Department practical flying-machines suitable for scouting purposes. The matter was referred to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, which seems to have given it scant consideration. We do not wish to take this invention abroad, unless we find it necessary to do so, and therefore write again, renewing the offer.