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.
[Illustration: THE HUFFMAN PASTURE. This rough field, eight miles from
Dayton, where the Wrights made their important experiments of 1904 and
1905, is now a part of Patterson Field.]
[Illustration: THE WRIGHT PATENT. Facsimile of the Letters Patent
awarded Wilbur and Orville Wright on May 22, 1906, for their invention,
the “Flying Machine.”]
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.
We are prepared to furnish a machine on contract, to be
accepted only after trial trips in which the conditions of
the contract have been fulfilled; the machine to carry an
operator and supplies of fuel, etc., sufficient for a flight
of one hundred miles; the price of the machine to be regulated
according to a sliding scale based on the performance of the
machine in the trial trips; the minimum performance to be a
flight of at least twenty-five miles at a speed of not less
than thirty miles an hour.
We are also willing to take contracts to build machines
carrying more than one man.
Respectfully yours,
WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT.
Once again the Secretary of War referred their letter to the Board of
Ordnance and Fortification. Major General J. C. Bates, member of the
General Staff, had become president of the Board since the previous
correspondence, and he signed the reply. The Wrights blinked at the
familiar phrases in the opening paragraph:
“I have the honor to inform you,” said the Major General, “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.”
The letter went on: “Before the question of making a contract with
you for the furnishing of a flying-machine is considered it will be
necessary for you to furnish this Board with the approximate cost of
the completed machine, the date upon which it would be delivered, and
with such drawings and descriptions thereof as are necessary to enable
its construction to be understood and a definite conclusion as to its
practicability to be arrived at. Upon receipt of this information, the
matter will receive the careful consideration of the Board.”
In other words, the Board would have to see drawings and descriptions
to determine if the machine the Wrights had been flying could fly!
Regardless of whatever irritation they felt, the Wrights wrote to the
Ordnance Board on October 19. In that letter they said:
We have no thought of asking financial assistance from the
government. We propose to sell the results of experiments
finished at our own expense.
In order that we may submit a proposition conforming as nearly
as possible to the ideas of your board, it is desirable that
we be informed what conditions you would wish to lay down as
to the performance of the machine in the official trials,
prior to the acceptance of the machine. We cannot well fix a
price, nor a time for delivery, till we have your idea of the
qualifications necessary to such a machine. We ought also to
know whether you would wish to reserve a monopoly on the use of
the invention, or whether you would permit us to accept orders
for similar machines from other governments, and give public
exhibitions, etc.
Proof of our ability to execute an undertaking of the nature
proposed will be furnished whenever desired.
Here is what Captain T. C. Dickson, Recorder of the Board, wrote in
reply:
The Board of Ordnance and Fortification at its meeting October
24, 1905, took the following action:
The Board then considered a letter, dated October 19, 1905,
from Wilbur and Orville Wright requesting the requirements
prescribed by the Board that a flying-machine would have to
fulfill before it would be accepted.
It is recommended the Messrs. Wright be informed that the Board
does not care to formulate any requirements for the performance
of a flying-machine or take any further action on the subject
_until a machine is produced which by actual operation is
shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an
operator_.
Such letters did not encourage the Wrights to press their offer
further. As Wilbur expressed it, they had taken pains to see that
“opportunity gave a good clear knock on the War Department door.” It
had always been their business practice, he said, to sell to those who
wished to buy instead of trying to force goods upon people who did not
want them. And now if the American Government had decided to spend
no more money on flying-machines until their practical use should be
demonstrated abroad, the Wrights felt that there wasn’t much they could
do about it.
Chanute, too, was now convinced that the seeming stupidity of War
Department officials was not accidental. His comment was: “Those
fellows are a bunch of asses.”
On that same day, October 19, when they wrote to the Ordnance Board,
the Wrights had sent a letter also to the British War Office amending
their earlier proposal. They said that recent events justified them in
making the acceptance of their machine dependent upon a trial flight
of at least fifty miles, instead of only ten miles as in the original
offer.
Shortly afterward, on November 22, 1905, the Wrights received a letter
from Colonel Foster, the British military attaché in Washington,
asking if it would be possible for him to see the Wright machine in
flight. Experiments for that year had been completed; but, the Wrights
replied, if Colonel Foster came to Dayton he could meet and talk with
many persons who had witnessed flights. That didn’t satisfy Colonel
Foster. He wrote again on November 29 that the War Office had had many
descriptions of airplane flights by persons supposed to have witnessed
them. What the War Office wanted, he said, was for him to _see_ a
flight.
The Wrights made it plain to the Colonel that they saw no point to
making a demonstration of their machine unless negotiations had reached
a point where a deal could be closed if the machine’s performance
was as represented. They reminded him that it wasn’t necessary for
the British War Office to put up any money in advance--only to sign
an agreement that a deal would be closed after the Wrights had shown
what their machine could do. Communications continued to pass between
the Wrights and the British. Colonel Foster was succeeded as British
military attaché at Washington by Colonel Gleichen and the latter made
a trip to Dayton. But nothing came of the negotiations. In December,
1906, the British finally wrote to the Wrights that they had decided
not to buy an airplane.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1906, the War Department at Washington
heard once more about the Wrights in consequence of an exchange of
letters between the Wrights and Godfrey Lowell Cabot, of Boston, who,
it will be remembered, had written to them just after the Kitty Hawk
flights in 1903. Cabot had seen a bulletin published by the Aero Club
of America, on March 12, 1906, that told about the progress the Wrights
had made during the season of 1905 at Huffman field. He had learned
also, from his brother Samuel, a little about the Wrights’ offer to
the U. S. War Department. Samuel Cabot got the news, presumably,
from Chanute, with whom he from time to time exchanged letters. (He
had written to Chanute asking if the Wrights needed any financial
assistance for carrying on their experiments, and Chanute told him they
did not.) Godfrey Cabot wrote to the brothers (in April, 1906) saying
that he supposed they had offered their machine to the U. S. Army “with
negative results,” but that if they ever decided to form a company to
exploit the machine’s commercial possibilities, he wished they would
send him a prospectus.