Part 20
I learn from the _Scientific American_ that your “June Bug” has movable surfaces at the tips of the wings, adjustable to different angles on the right and left sides for maintaining the lateral balance. In our letter to Lieutenant Selfridge of January 18th, replying to his of the 15th, in which he asked for information on the construction of flyers, we referred him to several publications containing descriptions of the structural features of our machines, and to our U. S. patent No. 821,393. We did not intend, of course, to give permission to use the patented features of our machine for exhibitions or in a commercial way.
This patent broadly covers the combination of sustaining surfaces to the right and left of the center of a flying-machine adjustable to different angles, with vertical surfaces adjustable to correct inequalities in the horizontal resistances of the differently adjusted wings. Claim 14 of our patent No. 821,393 specifically covers the combination which we are informed you are using. We believe it will be very difficult to develop a successful machine without the use of some of the features covered in this patent.
The commercial part of our business is taking so much of our time that we have not been able to undertake public exhibitions. If it is your desire to enter the exhibition business, we would be glad to take up the matter of a license to operate under our patents for that purpose.
Curtiss replied that, contrary to newspaper reports, he did not expect to do anything in the way of exhibitions; that his flights had been in connection with the Aerial Experiment Association’s work. The matter of the patents he had referred, he said, to the Secretary of the Association.
A few weeks later, when Orville went to Washington in preparation for the Fort Myer tests of the Wright machine, Captain Baldwin was there teaching Army officers to operate a new dirigible balloon for which Curtiss had furnished the motor. In speaking of the experiments in aviation being carried on by Curtiss and other members of the Aerial Experiment Association at Hammondsport, Baldwin said warningly to Orville: “I hear them talking.” He went on to caution Orville that the work those men were doing would infringe the Wright patents.
By the following year, Curtiss had formed a commercial company, The Herring-Curtiss Co., to make or exhibit airplanes.
On January 3, 1910, Judge John R. Hazel, of the Federal Circuit Court, at Buffalo, New York, granted a temporary restraining order against The Herring-Curtiss Co. and Glenn H. Curtiss to prevent them from infringement of the Wright patents. In handing down his decision, Judge Hazel said:
It appears that the defendant Curtiss had notice of the success of the Wright machine, and that a patent had been issued in 1906. Indeed, no one interfered with the rights of the patentees by constructing machines similar to theirs until in July, 1908, when Curtiss exhibited a flying-machine which he called “The June Bug.” He was immediately notified by the patentees that such machine, with its movable surfaces at the tips, or wings, infringed the patent in suit, and he replied that he did not intend to publicly exhibit the machine for profit, but merely was engaged in exhibiting it for scientific purposes as a member of the Aerial Experiment Association. To this the patentees did not object. Subsequently, however, the machine, with supplementary planes placed midway between the upper and lower aeroplanes, was publicly exhibited by the defendant corporation, and used by Curtiss in aerial flights for prizes and emoluments. It further appears that the defendants now threaten to continue such use for gain and profit, and to engage in the manufacture and sale of such infringing machine, thereby becoming an active rival of complainant in the business of constructing flying-machines embodying the claims in suit, but such use of the infringing machine it is the duty of this Court on the papers presented to enjoin.
Then, in February, 1910, Judge Learned Hand, in the Federal Circuit Court, at New York, issued an injunction to prevent the French aviator, Louis Paulhan, from making exhibitions in the United States unless he would put up an indemnity to the amount of $25,000. The Court declared that both the Bleriot and Farman planes that the defendant was planning to use were infringements of the Wright patents.
Not until January 13, 1914, did the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals hand down its decision in the Wright suit against Curtiss. The decision was in favor of The Wright Co.
In his interview in the New York _Times_, already quoted from, published in the New York _Times_, February 28, 1914, Captain Thomas S. Baldwin, though a close associate of Curtiss, heartily endorsed the final decision in the Wright _vs._ Curtiss case. Referring to that decision he told the interviewer:
“It is high time for all the rest of us to step up and admit that not a one of us ever would have got off the ground in flight if the Wrights had not unlocked the secret for us.
“I want to go on record as saying that the Wrights are fully entitled to the decision they have at last received....
“Mr. Curtiss is a friend of mine today,” said Baldwin, “and I have served in his companies as a director. But it is due to the Wrights as a simple matter of justice to have the story of the actual genesis of flight fully established.”
By that time, Captain Baldwin had abandoned the dirigible balloon for the airplane, and thus he, too, had been an infringer of the Wright patent. But as his public statements indicated, he showed an attitude quite different from that of most other infringers. Glenn Martin was another, like Baldwin, who acknowledged indebtedness to the Wrights.
After the Wrights had won their important suit against Curtiss in the Circuit Court of Appeals, Curtiss made no secret of the fact that he still hoped to find a possible loophole to get around the Wright patent. Since the decision of the Court enjoined him from using two ailerons operating simultaneously in opposite directions, he thought perhaps he could escape penalty by using just one aileron at a time, while the other remained inoperative. This, however, was covered by Claim 1 of the Wright patent, if the claim were given a liberal interpretation, as the Court had said the Wright Patent was entitled to, on account of the Wrights being the pioneers in the art of flying. But Claim 1 had not been cited in the former suits, and so had not as yet been adjudicated. If Curtiss could just show, or seem to show, in some way that the Wrights were not exactly pioneers, that some other machine capable of flight antedated the Wright machine, then he would be in a stronger position to defend himself against Claim 1 if it should be cited against him. Anticipating a suit, Curtiss took astounding means to prepare for combating it--as will appear.
But after all the evidence was taken in that case and just before the case was to come to trial, Orville Wright sold his interest in The Wright Co. to New York capitalists. Curtiss then contrived to gain delay after delay by approaching the new owners with proposals of settlement. These negotiations dragged on until the United States entered the First World War, and the Manufacturers Aircraft Association was organized for cross-licensing manufacturers who were building machines for the United States Government. Through this cross-licensing agreement, The Wright Co. received royalty on all planes manufactured for the Government. Consequently, this last case against Curtiss never came to trial.
The Wrights won their patent suits, too, in the highest courts of both Germany and France. The court in Germany made the comment in its oral decision that their discovery that a rear rudder was a balancing device rather than a steering device should entitle them to a basic patent.
Without going into too much detail about the various patent suits, the important point is that the priority of the Wright patents was sustained by the courts in both the United States and Europe. Every airplane that flies, in any part of the world, even today, does so by use of devices and discoveries first made by the Wright brothers.
These patent suits were a terrible ordeal for the attorneys and judges concerned, for aviation was so new that many of the technical terms were beyond the knowledge of nearly everyone. It was as if lawyers and judges had to learn a new language and take a course in the theoretical side of aeronautical engineering as they went along.
In a case against a foreign aviator, Wilbur Wright was called upon in Court to explain the function and operation of a rudder when an aeroplane is making a circle. Wilbur got hold of a piece of string and a fragment of chalk and went to a blackboard, where he made it clear to the Judge that when a machine is making a turn the pressure is on the opposite side of an aeroplane rudder from what it is on a ship’s or a dirigible’s rudder when they are making the same turn.
After the Judge had issued a temporary restraining order, at the end of the day’s proceedings, Clarence J. Shearn, attorney for the defendant, gloomily remarked: “If it hadn’t been for Wright and that damned piece of string, we would have won.”
One bit of testimony in another case was in regard to the accuracy of observations of men who fly airplanes. To show the inaccuracy of most people’s observations on phenomena having to do with physical laws, Wilbur used for illustration what a man thinks happens when riding a bicycle.
“I have asked dozens of bicycle riders,” said Wilbur, “how they turn a bicycle to the left. I have never found a single person who stated all the facts correctly when first asked. They almost invariably said that, to turn to the left, they turned the handlebar to the left and as a result made a turn to the left. But on further questioning them, some would agree that they first turned the handlebar a little to the right, and then as the machine became inclined to the left, they turned the handlebar to the left and made the circle, inclining inwardly. To a scientific student it is very clear that without the preliminary movement of the handlebar to the right, a movement of the handlebar to the left would cause the bicycle to run out from under the man, who would continue headlong in his original direction. Yet I have found many people who would deny having ever noticed the preliminary movement of the handlebar to the right. I have never found a non-scientific bicycle rider who had particularly noticed it and spoke of it from his own conscious observation and initiative. I found the same condition among aviators with whom I have flown. Some have almost no consciousness of whether the machine is rising a little or descending a little, or whether it is sliding somewhat to the right or to the left. The ability to notice these things, even in small degrees, is the main quality which distinguishes skilled aviators from novices and born flyers from men who will never be able to handle flying-machines competently.”
Even though the Wrights won all their patent suits, collecting royalties proved to be something else!
XIX
WHY THE WRIGHT PLANE WAS EXILED
Why was the original Wright airplane, the first flying-machine in the world capable of flight, deposited in the Science Museum at South Kensington, London, England, rather than in the United States National Museum, administered by the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington? Why should Exhibit A of one of the greatest of all American scientific achievements be in exile?
For the answer to these questions, puzzling to a vast number of patriotic Americans, we must trace events back a number of years.
It will be remembered that Dr. Samuel P. Langley, while Director and Secretary of the Smithsonian, with a $50,000 government fund at his disposal for experiments (besides $20,000 from the Hodgkins fund), had failed in his attempts to build a successful man-carrying flying-machine. At each trial, in 1903, his machine promptly fell from its launching platform into the Potomac. Doubtless Langley’s failure was a bitter disappointment to him--all the more so because he was derided in the public press for having even tried what was commonly believed to be impossible. But when the Wrights flew, only nine days after Langley’s final unsuccessful trial, they in a measure saved the Langley reputation. No one could any longer say that he was a “crank.” The Wrights had vindicated his belief that man could fly.
Langley uttered no word to minimize the importance of the Wrights’ feat. Nor was anything unfriendly toward Langley ever said by either of the Wrights. On the contrary, the Wrights more than once gave Langley credit for having been a source of inspiration to them, from the simple fact that he, an eminent scientist, considered human flight possible. Indeed, the Wrights took advantage of an opportunity to save the Langley name from being made ridiculous. After Dr. Langley’s death, the Smithsonian Regents ordered the erection in the Smithsonian building of a tablet in his memory. The plan was to inscribe on the tablet the “Langley Law,” as Langley’s chief contribution to aeronautical science. Dr. Charles D. Walcott, who succeeded Dr. Langley as Secretary of the Smithsonian, sent the proposed inscription to the Wrights for their opinion of it. Wilbur Wright replied that it would be both unwise and unfair to Langley to rest his reputation in aerodynamics especially on that so-called Langley Law or upon the computations which gave rise to it. The Wrights knew at that time, as all aeronautical engineers know today, that the Langley Law was simply a mistake and not true. Because of what Wilbur Wright pointed out in his letter, the Langley Law was omitted from the memorial tablet. But, having eliminated the discredited Law that _was_ Langley’s, Dr. Walcott then put in its place on the tablet an inscription crediting Langley for a discovery that _was not_ his! The inscription claimed for Langley that he had “discovered the relations of speed and angle of inclination to the lifting power of surfaces moving in the air.” (His tables of air pressures had been antedated by both Duchemin and Lilienthal.)
This tendency to claim for Langley what was not his was destined to show itself in a more pernicious form in later acts of Dr. Walcott. If Langley had lived, the relations between the Smithsonian and the Wrights would doubtless have continued to be marked by mutual respect and consideration. But after Dr. Langley’s death, the attitude of the Smithsonian began to change. The Institution started a subtle campaign to belittle the Wrights, to try to take from them much of the credit for having both produced and demonstrated the first machine capable of flight, and for having done the original research that made the machine possible. Indeed, the Institution even went so far as to issue false and misleading statements.
One of these was in connection with the first award of a Langley medal, publicly presented to the Wrights in February, 1910. In referring to that presentation, the Annual Report for the year 1910 (page 23), by the Secretary of the Institution, quoted Wilbur Wright as making a statement not made by him on that occasion at all, but used in a different connection at another time. The improper use of that quotation helped to create a false impression over the world that the Wrights had acknowledged indebtedness to Langley’s scientific work. The truth was that Wilbur Wright had in a private letter mentioned indebtedness to Langley, not for scientific data but for the fact that it was encouraging to know that the head of a scientific institution believed human flight to be possible. (Langley’s published work in the field of aerodynamics dealt with measurements of air pressures on flat surfaces only--and later experiments proved even that to be incorrect.)
The Smithsonian has more than once mentioned the award of the Langley medal to the Wrights as a proof of the Institution’s disposition to honor them. But the truth is that the Langley medal was established to honor Langley, not the Wrights. Neither in the award nor in the presentation of the medal to the Wright Brothers was there any suggestion that the Wrights were the first to fly.
In 1910, Dr. Walcott made it evident that the Institution actually did not want the original Wright plane of 1903 as an exhibit. This could be seen in letters he sent to Wilbur Wright in the spring of 1910. The first of these, dated March 7, said:[16]
The National Museum is endeavoring to enlarge its collections illustrating the progress of aviation and, in this connection, it has been suggested that you might be willing to deposit one of your machines, or a model thereof, for exhibition purposes.
The great public interest manifested in this science and the numerous inquiries from visitors for the Wright machine make it manifest that if one were placed on exhibition here it would form _one of the most interesting_ specimens in the national collections. It is sincerely hoped that you may find it possible to accede to this request.
Wilbur Wright replied as follows:
My Dear Dr. Walcott: ... If you will inform us just what your preference would be in the matter of a flier for the National Museum we will see what would be possible in the way of meeting your wishes. At present nothing is in condition for such use. But there are three possibilities. We might construct a small model showing the general construction of the aeroplane, but with a dummy power plant. Or we can reconstruct the 1903 machine with which the first flights were made at Kitty Hawk. Most of the parts are still in existence. This machine would occupy a space 40 feet by 20 feet by 8 feet. Or a model showing the general design of the latter machine could be constructed.
The peculiar attitude of the Smithsonian then began to appear. In his next letter to Wilbur Wright, dated April 11, 1910, Dr. Walcott wrote:
... The matter of the representation of the Wright airplane has been very carefully considered by Mr. George C. Maynard, who has charge of the Division of Technology in the National Museum. I told him to indicate what he would like for the exhibit, in order that the matter might be placed clearly before you and your brother. In his report he says:
“The following objects illustrating the Wright inventions would make a very valuable addition to the aeronautical exhibits in the Museum:
“1. A quarter-size model of the aeroplane used by Orville Wright at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September, 1908. Such a model equipped with a dummy power plant, as suggested by the Wrights, would be quite suitable.
“2. If there are any radical differences between the machine referred to and the one used at Kitty Hawk, a second model of the latter machine would be very appropriate.
“3. A full-sized Wright aeroplane. Inasmuch as the machine used at Fort Myer[17] has attracted such world-wide interest, that machine, if it can be repaired or reconstructed, would seem most suitable. If, however, the Wright brothers think the Kitty Hawk machine would answer the purpose better, their judgment _might_ decide the question.
“4 If the Wright brothers have an engine of an early type used by them which could be placed in a floor case for close inspection that will be desirable.”
The engine of the Langley Aerodrome is now on exhibition in a glass case and the original full-size machine is soon to be hung in one of the large halls. The three Langley quarter-size models are on exhibition. The natural plan would be to install the different Wright machines along with the Langley machines, making the exhibit illustrate two very important steps in the history of the aeronautical art.
The request of Mr. Maynard is rather a large one, but we will have to leave it to your discretion as to what you think it is practicable for you to do.
Sincerely yours, CHARLES D. WALCOTT, Secretary.
If Dr. Walcott’s suggestions, that the Wrights provide a reproduction in model size of their 1908 plane and the 1908 plane itself, had been accepted, then the proposed exhibits in the National Museum of models and full-size machines by Langley and the Wrights could easily have been of a nature to give a wrong impression. Surely a good many uninformed visitors to the museum would hardly have known, or stopped to think, that it is one thing to build and fly a small model plane, but an altogether different problem to build and fly a plane, of the same design, large enough to carry a man. Small models of flying-machines were flown by the Frenchman, Pénaud, as early as 1871. But a larger machine of the same design could not be flown--as the Wrights themselves in early boyhood had found out. Likewise, the fact that Langley flew a steam-driven model in 1896, and a gas-driven model in 1903, would not indicate to anyone who understands such matters that a full-size machine of the same design as either of the models could support itself in the air. Langley’s own experiments had proved how great is the gap between success with a model and with a larger machine. His full-size machine of 1903, of the same design as the model flown earlier that year, collapsed the moment it was launched. But suppose an uninformed visitor noticed, side by side, a Langley model plane of 1903, and a reproduction in model size of the Wright machine flown with a pilot in 1908. If he hadn’t read the labels carefully, or if the labels didn’t go into enough detail to make the facts clear, couldn’t he easily have received the false impression that Langley had been at least five years ahead of the Wrights? And if the visitor didn’t know that the Langley full-size machine of 1903 never flew, wouldn’t the sight of it, alongside the Wright machine flown in 1908, have seemed to confirm the wrong impression? Perhaps, however, that was the impression Dr. Walcott wanted museum visitors to receive!
The Walcott letter said, it may be noted, that if there were “any radical differences” between the first Wright machine and the one flown in 1908, then a “model” of the first machine might be appropriate. But since there were no radical differences between the 1903 and 1908 machines, not even a small-sized model of the first machine ever to be flown was being asked for. The Wrights took the letter to mean that the Smithsonian did not want an exhibit that would emphasize the fact of their having flown a successful, man-carrying machine as early as 1903. They thought it was significant that the letter did not say that the Wrights’ own opinion would decide which machine was more suitable, but only that their judgment “might” decide the question. Because of their strong belief that the Smithsonian was showing a prejudiced attitude, they made no reply to the Walcott letter.
There was no further correspondence on this subject between the Smithsonian and the Wrights until six years later. In 1916, the original Wright plane was exhibited at the dedication of the new buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, saw the plane and expressed astonishment. It was the first he knew that it was still in existence. Shortly afterward, in a conversation with Orville Wright, he asked why the plane was not being exhibited by the Smithsonian.
“Because,” replied Orville, “the Smithsonian does not want it.”