witnesses, had extended a general invitation to people living within
five or six miles to come and see their first attempt at flight. But
it was impossible for them to send word or give a signal as to the
exact time the attempt would be made. They had arranged, however, to
put a signal on one of the sheds that could be seen from the Kill Devil
Life-Saving Station only a little more than a mile away. Members of the
life-saving crew were on the lookout for the signal. Soon after the
signal was hung against the wall of the shed, the Wrights were joined
by John T. Daniels, Robert Westcott, Thomas Beacham, W. S. Dough,
and “Uncle Benny” O’Neal. All helped to get the machine to the place
selected, a quarter of a mile away, on the hillside. It would not have
been easy to drag the 750-pound machine that distance and the Wrights
used a characteristic bit of ingenuity. They set the machine on the
monorail track they were going to use for the take-off, slid it along
to the end of the sixty-foot wooden rail, then took up a rear section
of the track and added it to the front end. By thus re-laying the track
over and over, they were able to have the machine run on wheels all
the way. The sled-like skids that were the landing gear of the machine
rested on a truck--a plank about six feet long, laid across a much
smaller piece of wood to which were attached two small wheels, one in
front of the other. Each was kept on the track by two vertical guides.
These little wheels had ball-bearings. They were modified hubs from
wheels of a bicycle. The rail itself was two by four inches, set on
edge, with the upper surface covered by a thin strip of metal.
As soon as they reached the hill, the Wrights prepared for the test.
Each was eager for the chance to make the first trial, and they tossed
a coin to determine which of them it should be. Wilbur won the toss.
After the machine had been fastened to the track by wire to prevent
its moving until released by the operator, one of the Wrights started
the motor and let it run for a few minutes to make sure it was working
properly. Then Wilbur took his place on the machine. Two small boys,
with a dog, who had come to see what was going on, were scared away by
the noise of the motor.
Here is Orville Wright’s own account[3] of what then happened:
I took a position at one of the wings, intending to help
balance the machine as it ran down the track. But when the
restraining wire was slipped, the machine started off so
quickly I could stay with it only a few feet. After a 35- to
40-foot run, it lifted from the rail.
But it was allowed to turn up too much. It climbed a few feet,
stalled, and then settled to the ground near the foot of the
hill, 105 feet below. My stop-watch showed that it had been
in the air just 3½ seconds. In landing, the left wing touched
first. The machine swung around, dug the skids into the sand
and broke one of them. Several other parts were also broken,
but the damage to the machine was not serious. While the
tests had shown nothing as to whether the power of the motor
was sufficient to keep the machine up, since the landing was
made many feet below the starting point, the experiment had
demonstrated that the method adopted for launching the machine
was a safe and practical one. On the whole, we were much
pleased.
Two days were consumed in making repairs, and the machine was
not ready again till late in the afternoon of the 16th. While
we had it out on the track in front of the building, making
the final adjustments, a stranger came along. After looking
at the machine a few seconds he inquired what it was. When we
told him it was a flying-machine he asked whether we intended
to fly it. We said we did, as soon as we had a suitable wind.
He looked at it several minutes longer and then, wishing to be
courteous, remarked that it looked as if it would fly, if it
had a “suitable wind.” We were much amused, for, no doubt, he
had in mind the recent 75-mile gale when he repeated our words,
“a suitable wind”!
During the night of December 16th a strong cold wind blew
from the north. When we arose on the morning of the 17th,
the puddles of water, which had been standing about the camp
since the recent rains, were covered with ice. The wind had
a velocity of 10 to 12 meters per second (22 to 27 miles an
hour). We thought it would die down before long, and so
remained indoors the early part of the morning. But when ten
o’clock arrived, and the wind was as brisk as ever, we decided
that we had better get the machine out and attempt a flight.
We hung out the signal for the men of the Life Saving Station.
We thought that by facing the flyer into a strong wind, there
ought to be no trouble in launching it from the level ground
about camp. We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a
wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be
partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.
We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one
hundred feet west of the new building. The biting cold wind
made work difficult, and we had to warm up frequently in our
living room, where we had a good fire in an improvised stove
made of a large carbide can. By the time all was ready, J. T.
Daniels, W. S. Dough and A. D. Etheridge, members of the Kill
Devil Life-Saving Station; W. C. Brinkley of Manteo; and Johnny
Moore, a boy from Nag’s Head, had arrived.
We had a “Richard” hand anemometer with which we measured the
velocity of the wind. Measurements made just before starting
the first flight showed velocities of 11 to 12 meters per
second, or 24 to 27 miles per hour. Measurements made just
before the last flight gave between 9 and 10 meters per second.
One made just afterward showed a little over 8 meters. The
records of the Government Weather Bureau at Kitty Hawk gave the
velocity of the wind between the hours of 10:30 and 12 o’clock,
the time during which the four flights were made, as averaging
27 miles at the time of the first flight and 24 miles at the
time of the last.
With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands
of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think
today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a
twenty-seven-mile wind, even if I knew that the machine
had already been flown and was safe. After these years
of experience, I look with amazement upon our audacity in
attempting flights with a new and untried machine under such
circumstances. Yet faith in our calculations and the design
of the first machine, based upon our tables of air pressures,
obtained by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence
in our system of control developed by three years of actual
experiences in balancing gliders in the air, had convinced us
that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining itself
in the air, and that, with a little practice, it could be
safely flown.
Wilbur having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the
14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After
running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released
the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine
started forward into the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the
machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike
the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a
27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with
it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of
the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture
just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had
risen to a height of about two feet.[4] The slow forward speed
of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture
by Wilbur’s attitude. He stayed along beside the machine
without any effort.
The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic,
partly due to the irregularity of the air and partly to lack
of experience in handling this machine. The control of the
front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too
near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when
started, so that it turned too far on one side and then too
far on the other. As a result, the machine would rise suddenly
to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A
sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of
the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which
it rose into the air, ended the flight. As the velocity of the
wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine
over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the
speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per
second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight
of 540 feet made in calm air.
This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the
first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying
a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full
flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had
finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.
With the assistance of our visitors we carried the machine
back to the track and prepared for another flight. The wind,
however, had chilled us all through, so that before attempting
a second flight, we all went to the building again to warm up.
Johnny Moore, seeing under the table a box filled with eggs,
asked one of the Station men where we got so many of them. The
people of the neighborhood eke out a bare existence by catching
fish during the short fishing season, and their supplies of
other articles of food are limited. He probably never had seen
so many eggs at one time in his whole life.
The one addressed jokingly asked him whether he hadn’t noticed
the small hen running about the outside of the building. “That
chicken lays eight to ten eggs a day!” Moore, having just seen
a piece of machinery lift itself from the ground and fly,
a thing at that time considered as impossible as perpetual
motion, was ready to believe nearly anything. But after going
out and having a good look at the wonderful fowl, he returned
with the remark, “It’s only a common-looking chicken!”
At twenty minutes after eleven Wilbur started on the second
flight. The course of this flight was much like that of the
first, very much up and down. The speed over the ground was
somewhat faster than that of the first flight, due to the
lesser wind. The duration of the flight was less than a second
longer than the first, but the distance covered was about
seventy-five feet greater.
Twenty minutes later, the third flight started. This one was
steadier than the first one an hour before. I was proceeding
along pretty well when a sudden gust from the right lifted the
machine up twelve to fifteen feet and turned it up sidewise in
an alarming manner. It began a lively sidling off to the left.
I warped the wings to try to recover the lateral balance and
at the same time pointed the machine down to reach the ground
as quickly as possible. The lateral control was more effective
than I had imagined and before I reached the ground the right
wing was lower than the left and struck first. The time of this
flight was fifteen seconds and the distance over the ground a
little over 200 feet.
Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just 12 o’clock.
The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by
the time three hundred feet had been covered, the machine was
under much better control. The course for the next four or five
hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about
eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in
one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over
the ground was measured and found to be 852 feet; the time of
the flight 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder
was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not
injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in
condition for flight again in a day or two.
While we were standing about discussing this last flight, a
sudden strong gust of wind struck the machine and began to turn
it over. Everybody made a rush for it. Wilbur, who was at one
end, seized it in front. Mr. Daniels and I, who were behind,
tried to stop it by holding to the rear uprights.
All our efforts were in vain. The machine rolled over and over.
Daniels, who had retained his grip, was carried along with it,
and was thrown about, head over heels, inside of the machine.
Fortunately he was not seriously injured, though badly bruised
in falling about against the motor, chain guides, etc. The ribs
in the surfaces of the machine were broken, the motor injured
and the chain guides badly bent, so that all possibility of
further flights with it for that year were at an end.
It is unlikely that any of the five spectators who had seen these
flights sensed their scientific importance. But some of them felt
interested, from one point of view, because they would have the laugh
on a number of natives thereabouts who had insisted that these Wright
brothers must be a pair of harmless cranks. A common argument had been:
“God didn’t intend man to fly. If he did, he would have given him a set
of wings.”
It was the regret of his life to the Wrights’ friend, “Bill” Tate, that
he missed witnessing that first flight. He had decided that “no one but
a crazy man would attempt to fly in such a wind,” and made no effort to
be there.
After preparing and eating their lunch, and then washing their dishes,
Wilbur and Orville set out, about two o’clock that afternoon, to walk
over to the Kitty Hawk weather station, four or five miles away, to
send a telegram to their father. It must have been about three o’clock
when they reached the station. So few telegrams were sent from this
locality that no regular commercial office existed and it was permitted
to send them over this government wire as far as Norfolk where they
would be relayed by phone from the weather bureau to the office of one
of the telegraph companies.
Orville wrote out the following message to their father: “Success four
flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one-mile wind started from
level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty-one
miles longest 59 seconds inform press home Christmas. Orville Wright.”
What Orville meant when he wrote “against twenty-one-mile wind” was
that the wind was at least twenty-one miles an hour during each of the
flights. At the time of the first flight it was, as already noted,
between twenty-four and twenty-seven miles an hour--probably about
twenty-six miles.
After handing the message to Joseph J. Dosher, the weather bureau
operator, Orville joined Wilbur over in a corner of the room to examine
the record on an instrument that recorded the wind velocity.
Dosher got an almost instantaneous connection with Norfolk, and while
the Wrights were still looking at the wind record, he said:
“The operator in Norfolk wants to know if it is all right to give the
news to a reporter friend.”
But the Wrights replied: Absolutely no! They preferred to have the
first news of the event come from Dayton.
Dosher clicked out the refusal.
The operator at Norfolk, however, did not heed the warning.
When they left the weather bureau after sending their message, the
Wrights went over to the Kitty Hawk life-saving station, a few steps
away, and chatted with members of the crew there. Captain S. J. Payne,
in charge of the station, declared that he had seen one of the flights
with the aid of a pair of binoculars.
Then the Wrights walked to the post office at Kitty Hawk; and before
returning to camp they stopped for a farewell visit at the home of
Captain Hobbs, who had often done hauling and other work for them.
Meanwhile, the telegraph operator at Norfolk, disregarding the Wrights’
adverse response to his request, had promptly gone ahead and given a
tip about the flights to a young friend, H. P. Moore, of the Norfolk
_Virginian-Pilot_. Moore was connected with the circulation department
of the paper but was breaking in as a reporter and was in the habit of
calling at the weather bureau. He made a desperate effort to reach by
telephone over the government line someone at Kitty Hawk or elsewhere
along the coast who could furnish details about what the flying-machine
looked like, and about this Mr. Wright who was supposed to have
operated it. Whatever information he got did not come from eyewitnesses
of the flights, or from anyone who had ever seen the machine, and the
account published the next morning was about ninety-nine per cent
inaccurate. It described a flight of _three miles_ by Wilbur and told
of Orville then running about yelling “Eureka.” The machine had one
six-blade propeller beneath it, to elevate it, so the story ran, and
another propeller at the rear to shove it forward.
“Very little can be learned here about the Wrights,” the story said.
“They are supposed by the natives of Kitty Hawk to be people of means
and are always well dressed.”
(When Moore met Orville, years later, and asked him what he thought of
the account, Orville good-naturedly replied: “It was an amazing piece
of work. Though ninety-nine per cent wrong, it did contain one fact
that was correct. There _had_ been a flight.” Then Moore wrote that
Orville had corroborated his story.)
One must give the _Virginian-Pilot_ editors credit for treating the
news as important. The headline over the flight story the next morning
extended clear across the top of the first page.
Moore sent brief “queries,” outlining the story, to twenty-one other
newspapers over the country, including several in Ohio, one of them the
Dayton _Journal_. But nearly all the telegraph editors resented having
a correspondent suggest that a human being could fly by machinery. Of
the twenty-one newspapers to whom it was offered, only five ordered
the story. They were the New York _American_, the Washington (D.C.)
_Post_, the Chicago _Record-Herald_, the Philadelphia _Record_, and the
Cincinnati _Enquirer_. But not all five papers that received the story
published it the next morning. The Chicago _Record-Herald_ and the
Washington _Post_ delayed using it, and the Philadelphia _Record_ did
not print it at all. Thus only three newspapers in the United States
had a report of the great event at Kitty Hawk the next morning. The
Cincinnati _Enquirer_ was the only one besides the _Virginian-Pilot_
that gave space to the account on the front page.
As the Associated Press is a co-operative news-gathering agency and the
_Virginian-Pilot_ was a member, the story was available to the AP at
Norfolk, but the AP was not yet interested in it.
One might have thought the news would especially interest the Dayton
_Journal_; but Frank Tunison, the telegraph editor there (who also
handled outgoing news for the Associated Press) was a man who took
pride in not being easily fooled, and he paid no attention to the query
from Norfolk.
Orville’s telegram to his father did not reach Dayton until 5:25 that
evening. In transmission, errors had got into the message; fifty-nine
seconds had become fifty-seven, and the sender’s name was spelled
“Orevelle.”
Katharine Wright immediately sent a message to Octave Chanute that
the “boys” had reported four successful flights. Bishop Wright asked
his son Lorin to prepare a brief statement with a copy of the message
and give it to the Associated Press. After he had finished his
dinner, Lorin went to the office of the _Journal_ and inquired if the
Associated Press representative was there. He was referred to Frank
Tunison. Whether Tunison had already received the query from Moore at
Norfolk is not certain. But he seemed annoyed over being expected to
accept such a tale.
Without looking up from his work, he yawned and said to Lorin:
“Fifty-seven seconds, hey? If it had been fifty-seven minutes then it
might have been a news item.”
Nothing about the Wrights’ feat appeared in the Dayton _Journal_ the
next morning. But news considered important enough to be displayed
on the first page of that same issue included items about a routine
weekly meeting of the local united trades and labor council; a colored
man named Charles Brown, who admitted pocketbook thefts; the pardoning
of a robber from Joliet prison, in Illinois. On the page opposite the
editorial page, the biggest, blackest headline was: “Stores Are Filled
with Christmas Shoppers.”
Dayton afternoon papers on that December 18 did print accounts of the
receipt of the telegram by Bishop Wright, as well as other “facts”
about the flight. The Dayton _Herald_ article appeared to be a rehash
of the dispatch from Norfolk in the Cincinnati _Enquirer_. Over the
article in the Dayton _Daily News_, on an inside page, alongside of
so-called “country correspondence” from near-by towns, the heading was:
“Dayton Boys Emulate Great Santos-Dumont.” Santos-Dumont had flown
in an airship, and now the Wrights had flown in something or other.
Therefore the Wrights must be imitators of Alberto Santos-Dumont!
Lacking scientific knowledge, the editors failed to distinguish between
a flying-machine, heavier-than-air, and an airship consisting of a
gas-bag equipped with a propeller. Indeed, from then on, nearly all who
had heard of the reported flights, editors included, were in one or the
other of two groups of disbelievers: (1) those who refused to believe
the flights had taken place at all; and (2) those who thought that
even if they had been made they were not of great importance.
The Associated Press, that had declined to accept news of the flights
at either Norfolk or Dayton the day before, now sent out for afternoon
papers on December 18, a brief report, less than 350 words, from
Norfolk. This appeared to be simply a condensation of the article in
the _Virginian-Pilot_ that morning and contained most of the same
inaccuracies. Not more than two or three sentences in the AP dispatch
were correct. “The machine flew for three miles,” the report said,
“... and gracefully descended to the earth _at the spot selected_
by the man in the _navigator’s car_ as a suitable landing place....
Preparatory to its flight the machine was placed upon _a platform ...
on a high sandhill_ and when all was in readiness the fastenings to the
machine were released and it _started down an incline_. The navigator,
Wilbur Wright, _then_ started a small gasoline engine which worked
the propellers. When the end of the _incline_ was reached the machine
gradually arose until it obtained [sic] an _altitude of 60 feet_....
_In_ the center is the navigator’s car and suspended _just below the
bottom plan_ [sic] is a small gasoline engine, which furnishes the
motive power for the propelling and elevating wheels.
“There are _two 6-blade propellers_,” the dispatch said, “one arranged
just below the frame so as to exert an _upward force_ when in motion
and the other extends horizontally from the rear to the center of the
car furnishing forward impetus. Protruding from the center of the car
is a _huge fan-shaped rudder of canvas_, stretched upon a frame of
wood. This rudder is controlled by the navigator and may be moved to
each side, raised or lowered.” Not all the Associated Press papers
printed the brief dispatch in full; in fact, many did not use it at all.
With the first reports “confirmed” by the Associated Press, two papers,
the Washington _Post_ and Chicago _Record-Herald_, that had withheld
the story bought from Mr. Moore at Norfolk, finally printed the Moore
dispatch on the morning of December 19. The Washington _Post_ even
used it on the front page, but cautiously inserted qualifying phrases,
saying “it is reported” that a flight was made. And the Chicago
_Record-Herald_ on December 20 had an editorial about the flights,
or about “the” flight. But as the editorial restated many of the
inaccuracies contained in the news report, it only added to the general
misinformation.
(A few newspaper editors are still touchy about the inadequate
reporting of the Wrights’ first flights. As recently as January 29,
1941, the Chicago _Daily News_ had an editorial of nearly half a column
defending the merit of the hopelessly inaccurate Associated Press
dispatch from Norfolk on December 18, 1903. And shortly afterward, on
February 12, 1941, in connection with a letter from a reader who sought
to give the historic facts, the _Daily News_ editor, still unwilling
to accept the truth, added a note insisting once again that there was
“nothing fantastic” about that AP report from Norfolk!)
At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, in St. Louis, December 28 to January 2, Octave Chanute made
an address on the subject of Aerial Navigation in which he referred to
the Wrights’ flights. But little was said about the Chanute speech in
the newspapers.