about their correspondence with the Ordnance Board. Cabot was so
astounded over the treatment they had received that he promptly sent
the facts to his relative, Henry Cabot Lodge, United States Senator
from Massachusetts. Lodge forwarded Cabot’s letter, along with one of
his own, to the Secretary of War--who sent it to the Board of Ordnance
and Fortification. Brigadier General William Crozier, president of
the Ordnance Board, wrote to Senator Lodge, on May 26, acknowledging
his letter to the Secretary of War, and stating that “if those in
control of the flying-machine invented by the Wright brothers will
place themselves in communication with the Board of Ordnance and
Fortification, War Department, Washington, D. C., any proposition they
may have to make will be given consideration by the Board.”
Shortly afterward, Godfrey Cabot called upon General Crozier in
Washington and showed him copies of the Aero Club Bulletin which told
about the Wrights flying twenty-four miles in 1905. Since this was
convincing evidence that the Wrights’ machine was capable of horizontal
flight, General Crozier may have been somewhat embarrassed. He said the
Ordnance Board would be glad to receive a proposition from the Wrights!
He said, too, that he might send a representative to see the Wrights in
Dayton.
In reply to a letter from Cabot reporting his talk with Crozier, the
Wrights (on June 21) wrote:
If General Crozier should decide to send a representative to
Dayton we would be glad to furnish him convincing proof that
a machine has been produced which by actual operation has been
shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an
operator.
This letter also said:
We are ready to negotiate whenever the Board is ready, but
as the former correspondence closed with a strong intimation
that the Board did not wish to be bothered with our offers, we
naturally have no intention of taking the initiative again.
General Crozier did not send any representative to Dayton.
Several months later, in November, 1906, newspapers got wind of the
fact that there had been some kind of correspondence between the
Wrights and the War Department. On November 29, many newspapers carried
a dispatch from Washington which said: “While General Crozier will not
discuss negotiations with the Wrights, he said today: ‘You may simply
say it is now up to the Wright brothers to say whether the government
shall take their invention. They know the government’s attitude and
have its offer.’”
There had been no Government offer. The last communication the Wrights
had received from the War Department was the one, more than a year
before, in which the Ordnance Board said it did not wish to take any
further action.
The Wrights felt sure that the War Department no longer doubted the
existence of a successful flying-machine. It appeared, though, that
certain Army officers still were unwilling frankly to admit their
blundering behavior and come down from their high horse. There was
reason to believe that the Ordnance Board would welcome a face-saving
opportunity and hoped the Wrights would once again take the initiative
by making a new proposal. But the Wrights were not ready to do so.
Their advances had too often been spurned. The next move, they thought,
should come from the War Department.
In that frame of mind, early in the spring of 1907, the inventors
evolved a plan for bringing their machine to the attention of the War
Department in a manner quite dramatic.
An exposition was going to be held on the Virginia coast that year
to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the
first English colony, at Jamestown. In connection with this Jamestown
Exposition there would be a great naval review, April 26, at Hampton
Roads. President Theodore Roosevelt and other important government
people, including Army and Navy officers, would be present. What would
be the matter, the Wrights asked themselves, with appearing there
unexpectedly in their flying-machine? They could equip their machine
with hydroplanes and pontoons for starting and landing on water, take
it to Kitty Hawk, and then fly it, over Currituck Sound and beyond,
to the scene of the naval review. After circling a few hundred feet
above the battleships, the machine would disappear as suddenly and
as mysteriously as it had come. No newspaper people or anyone else
would know where it came from or how to get in touch with those who
knew about it, and the mystery would grow. Officers of the Army and
Navy would be asked embarrassing questions. Had they arranged for the
flying-machine to appear, and had it been adopted for use in time of
war? Those who still “knew” there was no practical flying-machine would
be set to wondering.
The Wrights had many a quiet chuckle at the thought of the effect
of their practical joke if it could be carried out. It was not too
dangerous a project. Much of the flight could be made over shallow
water in Currituck Sound. It would easily be possible to fly as far
as the scene of the naval review and out of sight on the return trip
before coming down.
They put an engine, with propellers attached to it, on pontoons, and
placed this experimental outfit on the river at Dayton for preliminary
trials. After a day or so of these tests it was evident that the plan
of mounting their machine on hydroplanes and pontoons and taking off
from the water was practical. But the inventors took aboard a passenger
who tried to be helpful. In his efforts to throw his weight where he
thought it would help the balance, he succeeded only in tilting the
machine so steeply that it dived below the surface. The propellers were
damaged. Before repairs could be made, something broke the dam in the
river. The Wrights had to abandon their plans for a prank that might
have been a national sensation.
Only a short time after the Wrights were planning their surprise
flight, in that spring of 1907, Herbert Parsons, a member of Congress
from New York, sent to President Roosevelt a clipping from the
_Scientific American_--whose editor now knew about the Wrights.
Roosevelt sent the clipping, with a note signed by his secretary, to
Secretary of War Taft. The note suggested a talk with Representative
Parsons to discuss the idea of experimenting with the Wright
flying-machine. Taft sent the clipping and White House note to the
Ordnance Board, with a note signed by his own secretary and headed
“Endorsement.”
The personnel of the Ordnance Board had changed, at least partly, since
the earlier correspondence with the Wrights. But the same attitude of
aloofness regarding flying-machines still existed. The Board could not,
however, ignore a letter from the office of the President of the United
States, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, with an endorsement
from the Secretary of War. It might have been expected that the Board
members would feel bound to investigate the reported flying-machine.
But they couldn’t bring themselves to go that far. All they did was to
send, on May 11, a brief letter to the Wrights, signed by Major Samson
M. Fuller, Recorder of the Board. The letter said:
I am directed by the President of the Board to enclose
copies of two letters referring to your aeroplane, for your
information, and to say that the Board has before it several
propositions for the construction and test of aeroplanes, and
if you desire to take any action in the matter, will be glad to
hear from you on the subject.
Accompanying the letter were copies of the notes from the White House
and the office of the Secretary of War. The Wrights believed they knew
why those copies were sent. It was to let them know that the Ordnance
Board was writing only because of orders from higher up.
Though the letter from the Board was standoffish enough, yet it did not
imply, as some of the earlier letters did, that the Wrights were a pair
of beggars, or cranks, seeking funds. The Wrights thought the letter
had been forced and that it really was a mere gesture, but nevertheless
they treated it as if the Ordnance Board might now be seriously
interested.
In their reply, May 17, the Wrights said they had some flying machines
under construction and would be glad to make a formal proposal to
sell one or more of them to the Government if the War Department was
interested. They said the machine would carry two men and a supply of
fuel for a flight of 200 kilometers; that a trial flight of at least 50
kilometers, at a speed not less than 50 kilometers an hour, would be
made before representatives of the Government before any part of the
purchase price was paid. They suggested a conference for the purpose
of discussing the matter in detail. And they said they were willing to
submit a formal proposition, if that was preferred.
In the next letter from the Ordnance Board, dated May 22, 1907, nothing
was said about the Wrights’ suggestion for a conference; but the
Wrights were requested to make a formal proposal incorporating the
specifications and conditions contained in their letter to the Board,
dated May 17.
The Wrights sent a formal proposal on May 31. In this proposal they
repeated all the specifications and conditions mentioned in their
letter of the 17th, and in addition agreed to the following: to teach
an operator to fly the machine; to return to the starting point in the
50 kilometer test flight; and to land without any damage that would
prevent the machine being started immediately upon another flight. The
price stated was $100,000 for the first machine; others to be furnished
at a reasonable margin above the cost of manufacture. They added that
they were willing to make the contract speed 40 miles an hour, provided
an additional sum would be allowed for each mile in excess of that
speed in the trial flight, with a forfeit of an equal amount for every
mile below. Again the Wrights made it plain that nothing was to be paid
to them until after a trial flight had met all contract requirements.
The next letter from the Ordnance Board dated June 8 said that $100,000
was more than the Board had available, and that such an amount could
not be obtained without a special appropriation by Congress at its next
session. Then the letter went on to ask what the price would include;
whether the United States would be granted exclusive use, or whether
the Wrights contemplated commercial exploitation of their machine, or
negotiations with foreign governments.
The Wrights wrote in reply explaining just what was included in the
price. They said it did not include any period during which the use
of the invention would belong exclusively to the United States, since
a recent contract precluded such an offer, and that it was their
intention to furnish machines for military use before entering the
commercial field. The letter repeated what the Wrights had said before,
that when a contract had been signed they would produce a machine at
their own expense and make flights as specified in the contract in the
presence of representatives of the War Department before any money
whatever was paid to them.
That was the last letter to pass between the Ordnance Board and the
Wrights for some time. But while the Wrights were in Europe, the Board
undoubtedly began to hear from military attachés and others about the
brothers’ negotiations abroad. At any rate, the Board began to show
signs of uneasiness and they wrote a letter, signed by Major Fuller,
October 5--received by the Wrights in Europe--to say that the Wright
proposal of June 15 had again been given consideration by the Board
at its meeting of October 3, 1907, but that nothing definite could be
done before a meeting of Congress, as Congressional action would be
necessary to accept the proposition, since the funds at the Board’s
disposal were insufficient.
The Wrights’ reply, from London, on October 30, made it clear that
if the price was the only thing in the way, that could probably be
satisfactorily adjusted.
Wilbur Wright started home from Europe ahead of Orville, but before
he left, it was agreed between the brothers that their price for an
airplane to the United States Government would be $25,000.
XI
EUROPE DISCOVERS THE WRIGHTS
Though the importance of the Wrights’ achievements was unrecognized in
the United States until long after their first power flights, reports
about their gliding prior to those flights had aroused much interest
abroad.
In the spring of 1903, the Wrights’ Chicago friend, Octave Chanute, had
gone to his native France in the interest of the St. Louis Exposition
to be held the next year. One purpose of his visit was to arrange with
Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aeronaut, who lived in Paris, to
make flights at St. Louis with his dirigible balloon. While in Paris,
Chanute was invited by the Aéro Club to give a talk regarding aviation
in the United States. In this talk, on April 2, he told of his own
gliding experiments in 1896 and of those of the Wright Brothers in 1901
and 1902, illustrated by photographs. Then in the August, 1903, issue
of _L’Aérophile_ Chanute published an article on the same subject, with
photographic illustrations, scale drawings, and structural details of
the Wright 1902 glider. In the _Revue des Sciences_ of November, 1903,
he again published photographs and description of that machine. This
1902 glider far surpassed any that had ever been built before, and in
it the problem of equilibrium had practically been solved. That glider
was the basis of the specifications in the Wright patent. Chanute’s
revelations therefore were sensational. And they did not fall on deaf
ears.
Until this time, about the only man in France who was showing any
interest in aviation was Captain Louis Ferdinand Ferber of the French
army, who himself had made gliding experiments as a hobby while serving
in an Alpine artillery corps. As early as 1901 he had begun an exchange
of letters with Chanute, after having read in the _Illustrierte
Aeronautische Mitteilungen_, a German magazine devoted mainly to
ballooning, a brief article, supplied by Wilbur Wright, about the 1900
experiments at Kitty Hawk. A little later he wrote for information to
the Wrights themselves. But now after the Chanute speech, Ferber was
no longer alone among Frenchmen in thinking the Wrights’ experiments
might be significant. Though belief in the possibility of a successful
flying machine had been at lowest ebb in France, the information
now made available by Chanute caused a greatly revived interest.
Heretofore the Aéro Club had devoted its attention almost entirely
to balloons and dirigibles, but it considered the French as leaders
in every line pertaining to aeronautics. Immediately following the
Chanute address telling of the Wrights’ gliding experiments in America,
several members of the Aéro Club, led by Ernest Archdeacon, decided to
organize a special committee on aviation. Archdeacon also made a warm
appeal in favor of organizing contests for gliders to show that the
French did not intend to allow anyone to surpass them in any branch of
aeronautics. He subscribed three thousand francs for the organization
of such contests and for prizes. _L’Aérophile_, official organ of the
Club, which up to this time had published little about aviation, now
suddenly began to carry many articles and items of news concerning
projected experiments in gliding.
But it was some months before the French actually passed from the
“talking” to the “doing” stage in gliding. In the meantime a brief
dispatch about the Wrights’ power flights on December 17, 1903, had
appeared in French and other European daily papers. Though the reports
of these power flights were received with considerable skepticism,
nevertheless they created such a furore in French aeronautical circles
that before the end of January, 1904, no less than six gliders of the
Wright 1902 type were being built in France from data furnished by
Chanute.
Ernest Archdeacon, of the Aéro Club, placed an order with M. Dargent,
a model maker of Chalais-Meudon, to build a copy of the Wright 1902
glider. Early in 1904 (January 28), Captain Ferber delivered a lecture
at Lyon on the subject of gliding experiments, and a young man named
Gabriel Voisin, just finishing his course in a technical school, came
to him to ask advice about how to get into the field of aviation. He
said he wished to “consecrate his life” to aviation. Ferber suggested
that he should go to see Archdeacon. Voisin did so, and Archdeacon
employed him to test the glider built by Dargent. Ferber gave Voisin
his instructions in gliding. Then Archdeacon employed Voisin to build
still another glider like the Wright machine. That contact with
Archdeacon gave Voisin his start toward becoming a famous airplane
manufacturer. And it was from that glider “_du type de Wright_,” as the
French papers called it, tested by Voisin, that grew the first Voisin
machines, soon to be followed by those of other copyists. Here was the
real beginning of French--indeed of European--aviation.
Articles about the Wright power flights were appearing in the French,
English and German aeronautical magazines. A longer article about the
Kitty Hawk event was printed in the March, 1904, issue of _Illustrierte
Aeronautische Mitteilungen_ from Carl Dienstbach,[7] a musician in New
York, who as a side line was the magazine’s correspondent.
One copyist after another began to use devices and technical knowledge
invented or discovered by the Wrights. When Ferber received a letter
from the American publication, the _Scientific American_, asking for an
account of his own gliding experiments, he wrote to them that he was
simply a “disciple of the Wright Brothers.” But these copyists were not
content to follow the Chanute revelations and build gliders just like
that of the Wrights. Instead, they tried to improve upon the Wrights’
work. The “improvements” were not successful, because the builders did
not have the Wrights’ knowledge and wind-tunnel data, except that used
in the 1902 glider, to guide them. So great were their difficulties
that some of the experimenters began to place blame on Chanute.
They thought Chanute must have misrepresented what the Wrights had
done--maybe purposely. That was the only way they could account for
their failure to get the good results obtained by the Wrights.
Robert Esnault-Pelterie, a member of the Aéro Club, pointed out
that they had not put to a fair test the information on the Wright
glider that Chanute had given them, because, he said, in building
their gliders they had not strictly adhered to Chanute’s description
and specifications. Since they had all the data needed to reproduce
the glider that Chanute had reported as having been so successful,
Esnault-Pelterie said, the way to determine the value of the
information was to build a Wright glider exactly like Chanute had
described and then test it to see how it performed. He himself then
built such a machine, in 1904, and reported that he got the same
performance as had the Wrights.
While the French were carrying on these experiments with copies of the
1902 Wright glider, the Wrights themselves were busy with their power
machine with which they made more than 100 starts in 1904. It was not
until late October, 1906, or nearly three years after the Wrights’
first power flights, that a French power machine was flown. (This
machine, piloted by Santos-Dumont, was reported to have made a hop of
200 feet, about ten feet above the ground.)
Before long, Archdeacon and another member of the Aéro Club, Henri
Deutsch de la Meurthe, were offering aviation prizes, and doing all
they could to encourage someone to try to build a successful power
plane. But as Captain Ferber later made clear to Georges Besançon,
editor of _L’Aérophile_, in a letter Besançon published in his issue
of June, 1907, this revival of interest in aviation in France, and
whatever was accomplished, was all a direct outgrowth of information
about what the Wrights had done in America.
In October, 1905, reports about the long flights accomplished that
year by the Wrights with their power machine were received in France.
They created an even greater stir in French aeronautical circles
than had the earlier reports. Just at the time these reports reached
France an organization was formed there to be known as the Fédération
Aéronautique Internationale, the purpose of which was to verify and
record the truth about reported aeronautical flights. The Aero Club
of America, formed at about the same time, was made the official
representative of the F.A.I. in America. No flight had as yet been made
in France with a motor plane. Long afterward, many uninformed persons,
even in the United States, declared that the flights by the Wrights
prior to 1908 really should not count, as they had not been officially
witnessed by any representative of the F.A.I.--the organization that
came into being after the flights had been made!
As the tempo of interest increased, the Wrights were kept fairly busy
writing letters to France in reply to requests for information. At the
time of the first reports of the 1903 flights at Kitty Hawk, probably
the only person in France inclined to believe them was Captain Ferber.
Knowing what he did, from correspondence with Chanute, and with the
Wrights themselves, he was not too incredulous. If he had said at first
that he believed human flight might have occurred, he doubtless would
have been laughed at--especially by those who had been most busily
experimenting. But as early as May, 1905, Captain Ferber had written to
the Wrights, asking if they would sell a power plane and at what price.
They were not ready to discuss such a project at that time and, though
Ferber wrote a second letter prodding them, they did not reply until
October 9, four days after they had completed their most important
flying experiments for that year.
In that letter, after telling of their recent long flights, the
Wrights said they were prepared to furnish machines on contract, to
be accepted only after trial trips of at least forty kilometers, the
machine to carry an operator and enough supplies of fuel for a flight
of 160 kilometers. They said they would be willing to make contracts in
which the minimum distance of the trial trip would be more than forty
kilometers, but that the price of the machine would then be greater.
They were also ready, the letter added, to build machines carrying more
than one man. No figures as to price were given.
Hoping to have the French War Department buy a plane, Ferber went to
his chief, Colonel Bertrand, director of the laboratory of research
pertaining to military aeronautics. But Colonel Bertrand told him
the French Government could not commit itself to pay a sum “probably
enormous” for an invention not yet authenticated. All that it was
possible to do, said Bertrand, was to appoint and send a commission to
see the Wrights.
Again Ferber wrote to the Wrights, on October 21, asking what the price
for a machine would be. He said he didn’t think his government would
any longer be interested in paying so great a sum as it had been when
he had first asked for a price.
The Wrights replied, on November 4, saying they would consent
to reduce their price to the French Government to one million
francs--$200,000--the money to be paid only after the genuine value of
their discoveries had been demonstrated by a flight of one of their
machines in the presence of French Government representatives. Ferber
had not told in his letter what the French Government had been willing
to pay and the Wrights did not say what the price of one million francs
was reduced _from_! The price was to include a complete machine, and
instruction in the Wright discoveries relating to the scientific
principles of the art; formulas for the designing of machines of other
sizes and speeds; and personal instruction of operators in the use of
the machine.
At the time Captain Ferber was thus dickering for the possible purchase
of a Wright flying-machine, others in France who were interested in
aeronautics still doubted if such a machine existed.
About the middle of October, Frank S. Lahm, a member of the Aéro Club
of France, had a chance meeting with his friend Patrick Y. Alexander,
of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, who had visited the
Wrights as recently as the previous April. Alexander expressed to Lahm
his strong belief that the Wrights had actually been making power
flights in America.