Part 19

Roy Knabenshue knew from his experience in making public airship exhibitions, that it was not enough to go where a fair or carnival was to be held and suggest airplane flights as a feature. To get all the business possible for his company he must promote exhibition flights in places where no such big outdoor events were yet contemplated. He particularly desired to have flights made in large cities where newspaper reports of the event would attract attention over a large area and aid him in making further bookings. With this in mind he went to Chicago and started inquiries to learn whether public-spirited citizens there would be willing to underwrite a big public demonstration of aviation along the lake front. Several people told him the man he should see was Harold McCormick, one of the controlling stockholders in the wealthy International Harvester Company. He went at once to McCormick’s offices in the Harvester Building. But when he reached the outer office, he discovered that it was not easy to get any farther.

“What was it you wished to see Mr. McCormick about?” asked a secretary.

“I don’t wish to sell him anything,” Roy explained, smiling in a manner that should have won confidence, but didn’t. “Please just say to him that there’s a man here who has an important suggestion for him.”

“But if you’ll tell me what the suggestion is,” the secretary proposed, “then he can let you know if he is interested.”

“No, I’ll tell you what you do,” countered Roy. “Please hand my card to him and let him decide if he wishes to see me.”

The secretary reluctantly took Roy’s card which indicated that he represented The Wright Co. of Dayton, Ohio. A moment later the secretary returned to say that Mr. McCormick was too busy to see anyone.

Roy walked out of the building into Michigan Avenue, discouraged.

“No matter how good an idea you’ve got,” he reflected, “and no matter how much some of these big executives might be interested, you don’t get a chance to tell them about it.”

As he strolled along, his eye chanced to fall on a big sign that read: “Think Of It. The _Record-Herald_ Now One Cent.” Then he remembered that the Chicago _Record-Herald_, rival of the _Tribune_ in the morning field, had recently reduced its price and was making a big bid for increased circulation. He also recalled that H. H. Kohlsaat, owner of the _Record-Herald_, had known his father. Using his father’s name for an introduction, he had little difficulty, a half hour later, in gaining access to Kohlsaat’s private office to tell him what was on his mind. The publisher grew interested. Yes, it might be a good idea to have some airplane flights along the lake front and invite the public to see them as guests of the _Record-Herald_. Before he left the office, Roy had the preliminary arrangements all made.

On the opening day of the big event, when Walter Brookins, as pilot, was about to take off on the first flight, Knabenshue remarked to him: “That corner window on the fourth floor of the Harvester Building is in the office of a man I hope will see what’s going on.”

The next day Knabenshue appeared once again at Harold McCormick’s office in the Harvester Building and presented his business card to the same secretary he had met on his previous visit.

After looking at the card, the secretary, without waiting to consult anyone, said: “Oh, yes, you’re with The Wright Company. I’m sure Mr. McCormick will wish to see you. Just step this way.”

Roy had made this call partly as a kind of practical joke--for the satisfaction of entering an office where he had once been denied. But as a result of the talk he then had with McCormick, it was arranged that a committee of Chicago citizens should sponsor, the next year, another aviation meeting there, to be the biggest thing of the kind ever held.

Meanwhile, on the final day of the 1910 exhibitions at Chicago, Brookins made the first long cross-country flight, 185 miles, to Springfield, Illinois. It was not, however, a non-stop flight. He made one landing in a cornfield, and it was necessary to obtain permission from the farm owner to cut a wide strip across the field to provide space for the plane to take off.

In that same year, 1910, Dayton people saw the first flight over the city itself. Thousands had now seen flights at the Huffman field, Simms station, but no flight had ever been made nearer than eight miles to the home town where successful flying was conceived. The Greater Dayton Association was holding, in September, an industrial exhibit, but it was operating at a loss. Those in charge of the exhibit saw that something would have to be done to arouse interest. Orville Wright was asked if he would start at Simms station, fly to Dayton and circle over the city. He agreed and the newspapers announced the flight for the next day. It was stirring news--even to Katharine Wright. She had started to Oberlin to attend a college meeting, but, when on her arrival there she happened to see a newspaper item about Orville’s flight scheduled for the next day, she hastened home at once.

Another premier event in 1910 was when an airplane for the first time in the world was used for commercial express service. The Morehouse-Martin Co., a department store in Columbus, Ohio, arranged to have a bolt of silk brought from Huffman field to a driving park beyond Columbus. The distance of more than sixty miles was covered at better than a mile a minute, then considered fast airplane speed; and the “express fee” was $5,000, or about $71.42 a pound. But within a day or two the store had a good profit on the transaction, for it sold small pieces of the silk for souvenirs, and the gross returns were more than $6,000.

Then, at Belmont Park, New York, in late October, 1910, Wright planes participated in a great International Aviation Tournament. All other planes taking part were licensed by The Wright Co.

Orville Wright now devoted his time mainly to supervision of engineering at the factory of The Wright Co. Wilbur was kept busy looking after the prosecution of suits against patent infringers and in March, 1911, he went to Europe in connection with suits brought by the Wright company of France. From France he went to Germany and while there called at the home of the widow of Otto Lilienthal to offer his homage to the memory of that pioneer in aviation whose work had been an inspiration to the Wrights.

After Wilbur’s return to America, Orville spent several weeks in October, 1911, at Kitty Hawk, where he went to do some experimenting with an automatic control device and to make soaring flights with a glider. In camp with him were Alec Ogilvie of England, who flew a Wright plane, Orville’s brother Lorin, and Lorin’s ten-year-old boy, “Buster.” On account of the presence of a group of newspapermen who appeared and were at the camp each day during his entire stay at Kitty Hawk, Orville never tested the new automatic device; but before his soaring experiments were over he had made, on October 24, a new record, soaring for nine minutes forty-five seconds. (This was to remain the world’s record until ten years later when it was exceeded in Germany.)

That same year, 1911, The Wright Co. benefited from another aviation record. Cal P. Rodgers, who had received some of his flying training at the Wright School, made--between September 11 and November 5--the first transcontinental airplane trip, from New York to California.

New as their line of business was, The Wright Co. was profitable from the start--especially so during the first year or two when the sight of a flying-machine was still a novelty and contracts for exhibition flights were numerous. (It might have been more profitable if the Wrights had not insisted that no contracts be made to include flights on Sunday.) But inevitably the exhibition part of the business began to taper off--and such profits as might still have come from it were reduced by the persistent illegal competition of patent infringers. More and more, the company’s dealings were with the United States Army and Navy and with private buyers of planes. The first private plane sold had gone to Robert J. Collier, and others seeking the excitement or prestige of owning a plane had been making inquiries. The retail price of a plane was $5,000.

With aviation thus becoming more practical, the Wrights were receiving from their invention a form of reward they had never expected. They would now have wealth, not vast, but enough to enable them to look forward to the time when they might retire and work happily together on scientific research. They were making plans, too, for their new home on a seventeen-acre wooded tract they had named Hawthorn Hill, in the Dayton suburb of Oakwood. But tragic days were ahead. Early in May, shortly after visiting the new home site with other members of the family, Wilbur was taken ill. What at first was assumed to be a minor indisposition proved to be typhoid fever. Worn out from worries over protecting in patent litigation the rights he knew were his and his brother’s, he was not in condition to combat the disease. After an illness of three weeks, despite the best efforts of eminent specialists, early in the morning of Thursday, May 30, 1912, Wilbur Wright died. He was aged only forty-five years and forty-four days.

Messages of condolence and expressions of the world’s loss poured in from two hemispheres, among them those from heads of governments.

Orville Wright succeeded his brother as president of The Wright Co.

In June, 1913, Grover Loening, a young man who had become acquainted with Wilbur at the time of the Hudson-Fulton exhibition flights, came to The Wright Co. as engineer, and then became factory manager. Loening had the distinction of being the first person in the United States to study aeronautical science in a university.

Business affairs had been complicated earlier that year by the fact that Dayton had the worst flood in its history. The Wright factory was not under water but not many of the employees could reach the building. Among the hundreds of houses under water was the Wright home on Hawthorne Street. To Orville a serious part of the loss there was the damage to photographic negatives showing his and Wilbur’s progress toward flight. But the negative of the famous picture of the first power flight was not much harmed.

Accompanied by his sister, Orville made his last trip to Europe in 1913, on business relating to a patent suit in Germany. At about the same time he sanctioned the forming of a Wright company in England. Before Wilbur’s death, there had been opportunities for a company in England, but the brothers had held back because all the offers appeared to be purely stock promotions in which the names of members of the English nobility would appear as sponsors. The British company as finally organized did not make planes itself, but issued licenses for use of the patents. Within a year after it was formed the English company accepted from the British Government a flat payment for all claims against the government, for use of the Wright patents up to that time and during the remainder of the life of the basic patents. Though the amount paid was no trifling sum, the settlement was widely applauded by prominent Englishmen, among them Lord Northcliffe, as showing a generous attitude on the part of the patent owner--about as little as could have been compatible with full recognition of the priority of the Wrights’ invention.

By this time, The Wright Co. had more applications to train student pilots than they could handle. Even a few young women wished to become pilots.

Two capable students, of a somewhat earlier period, destined to go far in aviation, were Thomas D. Milling, later General Milling, of the United States Army Air Corps; and Henry H. Arnold, who during the Second World War was Lieutenant General Arnold, Commanding General of the Army Air Forces and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air.

One unfortunate student pilot, who had begun his training at the Wright School in 1912, later got himself into much trouble. This man became one of the best flyers in the United States. As he had plenty of money he bought a plane of his own, and he used to give free exhibitions at his estate near Philadelphia. In one way or another he did much for aviation. But in 1917, when the United States entered the First World War, that young pilot refused to register in the draft and became notorious as a draft evader. His name? Grover Cleveland Bergdoll. The early Wright plane he had bought is today on exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. It is believed to be the only authentic Model B--the first model built by The Wright Co.--in existence.

In 1914, Orville Wright had bought the stock of all other shareholders in The Wright Co., except that of his friend, Robert J. Collier, who, for sentimental reason, wished to retain his interest. Orville’s motive in acquiring almost complete ownership of the company had been as a step toward getting entirely out of business. Both he and Wilbur Wright had agreed to stay with the company for a period of years, not yet expired, and he could not honorably dispose of his own holdings so long as those with whom he had made the agreement were still in the company. But almost immediately after buying the shares of the others, he let it be known that he might be willing to sell his entire interest. To this, Collier, the only other shareholder, agreed. In 1915, Orville received an offer and gave an option to a small group of eastern capitalists that included William Boyce Thompson and Frank Manville, the latter president of the Johns-Manville Co. The deal was closed in October, 1915.

Just after Orville had given his option to the eastern syndicate, Robert J. Collier came to tell him an important piece of news, and to urge him not to sell just yet.

Collier had been having some talks with his friend, the wealthy Harry Payne Whitney, and had urged upon him the idea of doing what Collier thought would be a wonderful piece of philanthropy that would mean much for the future of aviation in the United States. What Collier wanted him to do was to buy the stock of The Wright Co., thus gaining ownership of the Wright patents, and then immediately make the patents free to anyone in the United States who wished to manufacture airplanes.

Whitney was willing to carry out the Collier suggestion. To do so he was also ready to pay more for the stock of The Wright Co. than the syndicate had offered.

But Orville explained to Collier that the option already given was legally drawn and the holders presumably wished to exercise it.

Collier’s daring idea and Whitney’s generous acceptance of it had come just a little too late.

XVIII

PATENT SUITS

The Wrights had found that patents covering the basic features of their invention were not enough protection against infringers. Indeed, having the technical details on file in the Patent Office, where anyone who desired might see them, was, in a way, to the advantage of those who would help themselves to an inventor’s work and ideas. Only a decision in the courts could determine the justice of an inventor’s claims. But the courts work slowly and legal procedure is expensive. Except for their good fortune--never contemplated when they started--in realizing substantial sums from their invention, the brothers might not have been financially able to carry on the fight that finally gave them world-wide recognition as the first to contrive a successful flying-machine.

Altogether the brothers had active part in a dozen different suits in the United States against infringers--and there were suits in France and Germany in each of which about a dozen infringers were involved. Most of the suits in the United States did not go beyond the early stages, as the infringers were not disposed to continue after a preliminary injunction had been issued. But three suits were of special importance. One of these was against Louis Paulhan, French aviator, who was about to give exhibitions in the United States, using planes made in France. Another was against Claude Grahame-White, English aviator, also about to give exhibitions in the United States with planes that infringed the Wright patents. The most important suit of all was against the Herring-Curtiss Co. and Glenn H. Curtiss. This case was bitterly contested and was carried up to the U. S. Court of Appeals. It was brought by the Wright brothers, late in 1909, but The Wright Co., formed shortly afterward, succeeded the brothers as complainants.

Because of the importance of this suit in aviation history, it is worth while to examine the background of the relations between the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss. The Wrights’ personal acquaintance with Curtiss began in May, 1906, when he wrote to them in regard to the light motors of which he was a manufacturer. Then in early September, 1906, Curtiss visited the Wright office and workshop. He was brought there by his friend, Captain Thomas S. Baldwin, a well-known aeronaut, who was giving exhibition flights in Dayton with his dirigible balloon on which he used a motor he had persuaded Curtiss to build for him. It was to make repairs on that motor that Curtiss had come to Dayton.

After that meeting, the four men, Curtiss, Baldwin, and the Wrights, were together much of the time for several days. When in response to questions about their work, the Wrights showed a number of photographs of their flights made at the Huffman pasture during the two previous years, Curtiss seemed much astonished. He remarked that it was the first time he had been able to believe anyone had actually been in the air with a flying-machine.

Long afterward, in an interview in the New York _Times_ (February 28, 1914), Baldwin recalled the many talks he and Glenn Curtiss had with the Wrights in that fall of 1906. “I sometimes suggested to Curtiss,” Baldwin told the interviewer, “that he was asking too many questions, but he kept right on. The Wrights had the frankness of schoolboys in it all and had a rare confidence in us. I am sure Curtiss at that time never thought of taking up flying.”

A year after the Wrights’ first meetings with Curtiss, in October, 1907, the Aerial Experiment Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell and others, with headquarters first in Nova Scotia and later at Hammondsport, N. Y., where Curtiss lived. He became “Director of Experiments.” This was the first time Curtiss had been directly connected with aviation except as a manufacturer of motors, and three months later, a letter he wrote to the Wrights indicated that motors rather than aviation were still his chief interest. “I just wish to keep in touch with you,” he wrote, “and let you know that we have been making considerable progress in engine construction.” After listing and describing the various engines he was building, he proposed to furnish to the Wrights “gratis” one of his fifty-horsepower engines. But the offer was not accepted. The letter mentioned that Captain Baldwin was a “permanent fixture in this establishment”--a fact not without importance, considering information that Baldwin was later to reveal. Further on in the letter, Curtiss told of Dr. Bell’s reading to the members of the Aerial Experiment Association the United States Government’s specifications for the purchase of a flying-machine, and added: “You, of course, are the only persons who could come anywhere near doing what is required.”

About a fortnight after receipt of that letter from Curtiss, the Wrights got another letter dated January 15, 1908, written on Aerial Experiment Association stationery, and signed by Lieutenant T. Selfridge, whose name appeared on the letterhead as secretary of the association. (This was the same Selfridge who was killed a few months later in the tragic airplane accident at Fort Myer.) In that letter, Selfridge, on behalf of the Experiment Association, said:

I am taking the liberty of writing you and asking your advice on certain points connected with gliding experiments, or rather glider construction, which we started here last Monday.

Will you kindly tell me what results you obtained on the travel of the center of pressure both on aerocurves and aeroplanes?

Also, what is a good, efficient method of constructing the ribs of the surfaces so that they will be light and yet strong enough to maintain their curvature under ordinary conditions, and a good means of fastening them to the cloth and upper lateral cords of the frame?

I hope I am not imposing too much by asking you these questions.

Supposing the information would be used only for scientific purposes, the Wrights obligingly replied at once as follows:

You will find much of the information you desire in the addresses of our Mr. Wilbur Wright before the Western Society of Engineers, published in the Journals of the Society of December, 1901, and August, 1903.

The travel of the center of pressure on aeroplanes is from the center at 90 degrees, toward the front edge as the angle becomes smaller. The center of pressure on a curved surface is approximately at its center at 90 degrees, moves forward as the angle is decreased until a critical angle is reached, after which it reverses, and moves toward the rear edge. The critical angle varies for different shaped curves, but is generally reached at some angle between 12 and 18 degrees. With the angles used in gliding flight the travel will be between the center of the surface and a point one-third back from the front edge.

The methods of construction used in our gliders are fully described in an article by Mr. Chanute in the _Revue des Sciences_ in 1903 (we do not remember the month) and in the specifications of our United States patent, No. 821,393.

The ribs of our gliders were made of second growth ash, steamed and bent to shape.

Selfridge replied in a few days saying he had been able to obtain a copy of the patent and would endeavor to get the other references the Wrights had supplied.

The data must have been useful to the Aerial Experiment Association for early the following summer, Glenn Curtiss, “Director of Experiments” had a power-driven airplane, called the “June Bug,” in which he made a flight on July 4, 1908, at Hammondsport. That flight created the belief in the minds of many who were not fully informed that the Aerial Experiment Association must have done an amazing job of original research. This belief was encouraged by the fact that after the Aerial Experiment Association began building and experimenting with flying-machines, using much information they had obtained from the Wrights, they neglected, in public statements about their work, to so much as mention the Wright brothers.

Soon after the report of the flight of the “June Bug,” there appeared in the press a statement that the Aerial Experiment Association was disbanding, and that Glenn H. Curtiss was going to engage in exhibition flying. That news led Orville Wright to send to Curtiss the following letter: