such potentialities, if it really existed, slip through their fingers.
They therefore gave, instead of a signed contract, their solemn verbal
promise that if the Wrights would make a flight before them, such as
had been offered in the proposed written contract, they would buy
planes on the terms the Wrights had offered.[9]
The Wrights felt that these officials, being at the head of important
departments, could be relied upon, and they were willing to take their
verbal guarantee to buy planes upon the successful demonstration of the
machine. When they left Germany, they fully expected to return the next
March to make such a demonstration. (They could not foresee that they
would have too many other engagements in definite contracts elsewhere
before another four months had passed.)
Wilbur Wright returned from Europe in November of 1907. But Orville
remained a little longer to attend to having a number of engines built
in Paris by the firm of Barriquand & Marre. The Wrights wanted to
have in reserve duplicates of their American engine, at that time in
customs, at Le Havre, for use the next year. Barriquand & Marre were
manufacturers of precision instruments and had built light motors.
They doubted if the Wright motor gave as much power as was claimed for
it, but they felt sure that if it did, the copies they made of it--on
account of more careful workmanship--would give considerably more power
than the original. But as later events showed, they gave less. At that
time it was not known that when one motor is made as an exact copy, to
the thousandth of an inch, of another motor, of supposedly the same
steels and other metals, but from different foundries and mills, months
of experiment are required before the new motor can be made to work
properly.
XIII
A DEAL WITH THE U. S.
While in Paris, in 1907, the Wrights naturally had visits with Frank
S. Lahm, who had arranged with his brother-in-law, Henry Weaver, of
Mansfield, to investigate the reports from America of human flight.
Lahm invited the inventors to his home and there they met his son,
Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm,[10] who was recuperating from an attack of
typhoid fever. The younger Lahm, a former instructor at West Point, had
recently spent a year at the French Cavalry School at Saumur. He, as
well as his father, was much interested in aeronautics. The previous
October he had won the James Gordon Bennett balloon race by starting at
Paris and landing in England. Probably the only American Army officer
who recognized that the airplane should now be taken seriously, he was
delighted to meet the Wright brothers, with whom he now began a lasting
friendship. After he had learned a little about their negotiations in
France, he began to urge the United States War Department to take more
interest in the airplane.
It so happened that, in September, 1907, only a few weeks after this
meeting, Lieutenant Lahm was transferred by the War Department from
the Cavalry to the Signal Corps, to be stationed at Washington. His
first assignment was to make a tour of Europe, before returning to
Washington, and report on the situation regarding dirigible aircraft
in several countries. Soon afterward he returned to Washington. The
presence of a man in the War Department there who felt enthusiasm for
the airplane’s possibilities, and who had strong faith in the Wrights,
may have had its effect on his associates. At any rate, there was now
in the War Department a man who believed in the Wrights.
When Wilbur stopped in Washington shortly before Thanksgiving, 1907, en
route to Dayton, on his return from France, he had a talk with General
Crozier and Major Fuller of the Ordnance Department, and with General
Allen, head of the Signal Corps--the organization that would conduct
tests of the airplane and use it if the Ordnance Board sanctioned and
provided funds for its purchase. At this meeting Wilbur stated the
price the Wrights would accept ($25,000) and the performance of the
machine that they were willing to guarantee. These terms, agreed upon
between the brothers before Wilbur left France, were stiff enough, it
was thought, to bar any competition. The Ordnance Board was to have a
meeting on December 5, and Wilbur was invited to appear before it. He
did so; but the meeting did not inspire him with confidence that an
early contract could be obtained at the price of $25,000. The Wrights
were not willing to accept less, because they thought they had better
prospects abroad. However, the Signal Corps soon began drawing up
specifications, and, on December 23, advertised for bids.
Inasmuch as the Wright machine was the only one in existence that
could meet these requirements, and the price was understood in advance,
advertising for bids may have been superfluous; but it was considered
necessary to meet demands of red tape. Among specifications set forth
in the advertisement for bids were these: the plane must be tested
in the presence of Army officers; it must be able to carry for one
hour a passenger besides the pilot, the two weighing not less than
350 lbs.; it must show an average speed of forty miles an hour, in a
ten-mile test, and carry enough fuel for 125 miles. Also, the machine
must have “demountability”; that is, it should be built in such a way
that it could be taken apart, and later reassembled, without too much
difficulty, when necessary to transport it on an army truck from one
place to another.
Almost from the day the advertisements for bids appeared, the War
Department was subject to editorial attacks--not because it had been so
slow about interesting itself in the airplane, but because it had done
so at all!
The New York _Globe_ said:
One might be inclined to assume from the following
announcement, “the United States Army is asking bids for a
military airship,” that the era of practical human flight had
arrived, or at least that the government had seriously taken
up the problem of developing this means of travel. A very
brief examination of the conditions imposed and the reward
offered for successful bidders suffices, however, to prove this
assumption a delusion.
A machine such as is described in the Signal Corps’
specifications would record the solution of all the
difficulties in the way of the heavier-than-air airship, and,
in fact, finally give mankind almost as complete control of the
air as it now has of the land and the water. It would be worth
to the world almost any number of millions of dollars, would
certainly revolutionize warfare and possibly the transportation
of passengers; would open to easy access regions hitherto
inaccessible except to the most daring pioneers and would,
in short, be probably the most epoch-making invention in the
history of civilization.
Nothing in any way approaching such a machine has ever been
constructed (the Wright brothers’ claims still await public
confirmation), and the man who has achieved such a success
would have, or at least should have, no need of competing in a
contest where the successful bidder might be given his trial
because his offer was a few hundred or thousand dollars lower
than that of someone else. If there is any possibility that
such an airship is within measurable distance of perfection
any government could well afford to provide its inventor
with unlimited resources and promise him a prize, in case of
success, running into the millions.
The _American Magazine of Aeronautics_ (later called _Aeronautics_)
devoted its opening article in the issue of January, 1908, to pointing
out the absurdity of what the War Department was trying to do.
There is not a known flying-machine in the world which could
fulfill these specifications at the present moment, [declared
the editorial].... Had an inventor such a machine as required
would he not be in a position to ask almost any reasonable sum
from the government for its use? Would not the government,
instead of the inventor, be a bidder?... Perhaps the Signal
Corps has been too much influenced by the “hot air” of
theorizers, in which aeronautics unfortunately abounds, who
have fathomed the entire problem without ever accomplishing
anything; talk is their stock in trade and models or machines
are beneath them because beyond their impractical nature....
Why is not the experience with Professor Langley a good
guide?... We doubt very much if the government receives any
bids at all possible to be accepted.
To the surprise of nearly everyone, forty-one proposals were received.
Most of the bidders were the same kind of cranks the Ordnance Board had
at first supposed the Wrights to be; and their bids were rejected when
they failed to put up a required ten per cent of the proposed price
of the plane, as a sign of good faith. Two other bidders besides the
Wrights did make a ten per cent deposit. One of these, J. F. Scott, of
Chicago, had made a bid of $1,000, and promised delivery of a plane in
185 days. Another was A. M. Herring. His price was $20,000; delivery to
be in 180 days. The Wrights’ bid was $25,000, with delivery promised in
200 days.
Receipt of these unexpected bids created a problem. Everyone assumed
that none of the bidders except the Wrights had anything practical to
offer; and yet the government would be expected to accept the lowest
bid and let the winner show what he could do. No matter how dismally he
failed to meet requirements, dealing with him would take up time and
cause delays.
General Allen, of the Signal Corps, went to Secretary of War Taft
to inquire how the War Department might get around the difficulty.
Taft said they could accept all legal bids and as only the Wrights
could meet the requirements, the others would be eliminated. The only
difficulty was that even if no money would ever be paid to the other
bidders, yet it would be illegal to accept the bids unless enough money
to pay for whatever was ordered was known to be available. However,
Taft suggested a way around that. He knew that the President had at his
disposal an emergency fund to do with as he saw fit. If the President
wished to he could guarantee that all bidders would be paid if they met
the tests.
General Allen, accompanied by Captain Charles De Forest Chandler and
Lieutenant F. P. Lahm, Signal Corps officers, called upon President
Roosevelt who promptly agreed with Taft’s suggestion. He told them to
accept all bids and that he would place funds at their disposal to meet
legal technicalities. The Signal Corps then agreed to buy planes from
all three bidders if they met the necessary requirements.
One of those bidders soon eliminated himself by asking the Government
to return his ten per cent deposit. Though the government was not
obliged to return the deposit, it nevertheless did so. Herring, the
only remaining legal bidder besides the Wrights, hung on a while longer.
What A. M. Herring had in mind was simply to obtain the contract
in consequence of his lower price and then try to sublet it to the
Wrights. He even had the effrontery to go to Dayton to see the Wrights
and make such a proposal. Naturally, they were not interested.
[Illustration: THE WRIGHT PLANE IN FRANCE. The plane is being hauled
from one field to another, near Le Mans, France, in August, 1908.]
The Wrights’ bid was accepted on February 8, 1908.
As it happened, this was not the only important contract the Wrights
entered into at about that time. On March 3, three weeks after the
Signal Corps had accepted their bid, they closed a contract with
Lazare Weiller, a wealthy Frenchman, to form a syndicate to buy the
rights to manufacture, sell, or license the use of the Wright plane in
France. Upon completion of certain tests of the machine, the Wrights
were to receive a substantial amount in cash, a block of stock, and
provision for royalties. The French company would be known as La
Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne. A member of the syndicate
was M. Deutsch de la Meurthe who had taken steps toward forming a
French company some time previously.
[Illustration: THE WRIGHTS AND WILBUR’S FRENCH PUPILS. Left to right,
Captain Lucas-Girardville, Comte Charles de Lambert, Orville Wright,
Wilbur Wright, and Paul Tissandier, at Pau, France, early in 1909.]
One provision of the U. S. War Department contract was that the
Government could deduct ten per cent of the purchase price for each
mile per hour that the machine fell short of the forty-mile goal. That
is, if it went only thirty-nine miles an hour, the Wrights would be
docked ten per cent; if only thirty-eight miles, another ten per cent,
and so on. If the machine did not do at least thirty-six miles an hour,
then the Government didn’t have to accept it at all. On the other hand,
the Wrights would receive a ten per cent bonus for each mile per hour
they attained above forty.
It was the intention of the Signal Corps, and the Wrights so understood
it, that these reduced or additional payments would be for either a
mile or a fraction of a mile. But a Government legal department made a
surprising interpretation of that part of the contract. If at the time
of the tests the plane went 40-99/100 miles, the Wrights would not be
paid for more than 40; but if the plane fell short of 40 miles an hour
by only 1/100 of a mile, or even less, then they would be docked for a
full mile.
(Orville did not learn of that astounding example of the legal mind
at work until after he arrived at Washington to prepare for the tests
and it was then too late to build a faster plane. But in the final
tests the next year, he had a plane that he knew would give the buyer
no opportunity to take advantage of what he regarded as a one-sided
interpretation of the contract.)
Though the Wrights had done no flying since October, 1905, they had
done much work on improving both plane and engine. Their newest engine,
capable of producing about thirty-five horsepower continuously, was
also so much better as to reliability that now long flights could be
made without danger of failure of the motive power.
During all their experiments at the Huffman pasture they had continued
to ride “belly-buster,” as a boy usually does when coasting on a
sled. Lying flat in that way and controlling the mechanism partly by
swinging the hips from one side to the other was good enough for the
experimental stages of aviation; but the Wrights knew that if a plane
was to have practical use the pilot must be able to take an ordinary
sitting position and do the controlling and guiding with his hands and
feet as in an automobile. It was not all fun lying flat for an hour at
a time with head raised to be on the lookout for possible obstacles. “I
used to think,” said Orville in later years, “the back of my neck would
break if I endured one more turn around the field.”
The brothers therefore had adopted a different arrangement of the
control levers, for use in a sitting position, and a seat for a
passenger. Moreover, the machine could be steered from either seat and
thus was suitable for training other pilots if occasion should arise.
The plane sent to France for possible trials in 1907 was thus equipped.
They revamped the machine they had used at the Huffman pasture in
1905, and installed their later improvements. It now had an engine
with vertical instead of horizontal cylinders. With this machine they
would go to Kitty Hawk and gain needed practice in handling their new
arrangement of the control levers.
The United States Government tests would be made at Fort Myer,
Virginia, near Washington. Delivery of the machine had to be made by
August 28, and the tests themselves were to begin shortly afterward, in
September. But at about that same time, one of the brothers would make
a demonstration in France. They had not yet decided which of them would
fly at Fort Myer and which should go to France. But both had to be well
prepared and there was no time to lose. They must be established at
Kitty Hawk as soon as possible.
Wilbur Wright set out for Kitty Hawk ahead of Orville and arrived there
April 9, 1908. He was joined within a week by a mechanic from Dayton,
Charles W. Furnas. First of all, it was necessary to do much rebuilding
of the camp. The buildings had not only suffered from storms, but
had been stripped of much timber by persons who supposed the Wrights
had permanently abandoned them. The plane was shipped in crates from
Dayton April 11, but had to be left for some time in a freight depot at
Elizabeth City until the new shed was completed at Kitty Hawk. Both
Orville and the plane reached there on April 25.
It might have been expected that with at least two governments now
showing interest in the Wright plane, each of the brothers would
have been besieged en route by reporters and others. But the general
public, including reporters, still seemed disinclined to believe in
human flight. At about the same time that the Wrights were preparing
to go to Kitty Hawk, a publisher brought out a new novel by H. G.
Wells, _Tono-Bungay_, in which the leading character built a gliding
machine “along the lines of the Wright brothers’ airplane,” and finally
a flying-machine. That stirred one or two American book reviewers
to chide the author for putting such fantastic material into a tale
otherwise plausible.
Because of the persistence of that kind of incredulity, the Wrights
did not expect many sightseers, least of all newspapermen, at Kitty
Hawk during their preparations for government tests. Therefore they
did not think it necessary to keep their plans secret. Though they
weren’t seeking reporters, neither were they trying to avoid them. They
simply went ahead without giving any thought to newspapermen one way or
another. But the Wrights were about to be discovered.
Not until May 6 did either of the brothers make a flight. But the
newspapers, instead of ignoring what the Wrights had done, now began
to report what they had _not_ done. On May 1, the _Virginian-Pilot_,
of Norfolk (the same paper that had reported, not too accurately,
the first flight of an airplane), carried a wild tale that one of
the Wright brothers had flown, the day before, ten miles out over
the ocean! Practically the same story was widely published the next
day. Katharine Wright on May 2 telegraphed her brothers that “the
newspapers” had reported a flight. As the Wrights later learned, the
_B. Z. Mittag_, in Berlin, carried a dispatch from Paris: “From America
comes the news that the Wright brothers for the first time have made
in public a controlled flight. The flight was made on April 30, at
Norfolk, Va., before a U. S. Government Commission.”
That same story must have reached London, for the Wrights received a
cablegram from Patrick Alexander: “Very hearty congratulations.”
Joseph Dosher, who had been the Weather Bureau man at Kitty Hawk in
1903, but was now stationed 30 miles north of Kitty Hawk, telephoned to
the Kill Devil life-saving crew, on May 2, seeking information about
the Wrights, presumably at the request of some newspaper. That same
day, the Greensboro (N. C.) _News_ published a telegram from Elizabeth
City, dated May 1, saying that the Wright brothers “of airship fame”
were at Nag’s Head with their “famous flying-machine.”
On May 1, the New York _Herald_ had wired to the Weather Bureau
operator at Manteo, on Roanoke Island, for information. And on May
2, the _Herald_ published an item with a Norfolk date line, that the
Wrights were reported to have flown “over the ocean.” This dispatch
appeared also in the _Herald’s_ Paris edition. Just below the report
in the Paris edition was an editorial comment that if the Wrights
had actually flown two miles, then they had broken the records of
Delagrange and Farman in France. The _Herald_ editor evidently was
still unaware that long before Delagrange, Farman, or other Wright
copyists abroad had even left the ground in flight, the Wright brothers
had flown twenty-four miles.
Inasmuch as the Wrights had not yet begun their flights of 1908, it
was not easy for the New York _Herald_ to obtain confirmation or more
details about the imaginary flight out over the ocean. No regularly
employed newspaperman at Norfolk wanted to go to Kitty Hawk on what
might be a wild goose chase. But D. Bruce Salley, a free lance reporter
at Norfolk, was willing to make the trip.
Salley reached Manteo on May 4, and the Wright brothers’ records show
that he came to their camp the next day. He told the brothers he had
been asked by a New York paper to investigate the story of their flight
over the ocean. The day after Salley’s visit, the Wrights did make
their first flight of the season, and though Salley did not see it,
he learned about it by phone from one of the men at the Kill Devil
life-saving station. His informant told him that one of the Wrights had
flown at least 1,000 feet, at about sixty feet above the ground.
Salley immediately sent a query from Manteo, giving briefly the gist
of the story, to a list of papers he hoped would be interested. Most
of the papers ignored the message; but the telegraph editor of the
Cleveland (Ohio) _Leader_ not only wasn’t interested but was indignant
that his intelligence should be insulted by the offer of so improbable
a tale. He declined to pay the telegraph toll for the short message,
even though at the night press rate of only one-third of a cent a
word the cost could hardly have been more than a dime. His only reply
to Salley was an admonition to “cut out the wild-cat stuff.” Salley,
now equally indignant, wired back offering to give names of well-known
persons who could testify to his reliability; but the Cleveland editor
paid no further attention.
When Salley’s query reached the office of the New York _Herald_, it put
the editors in a quandary. Though they had printed the brief report
about a flight that hadn’t occurred, now they were beginning to wonder
if all the reports about the Wrights weren’t fakes. Yet they knew
that the owner of the paper, James Gordon Bennett, living in Paris,
would almost certainly discharge any editor responsible for omitting
the story if it _were_ true. They decided, with misgivings, to print
the story and it appeared the next morning on the first page of the
_Herald_, though not in the most prominent position.
Then the editors determined to send a staff man to Kitty Hawk for the
facts. They picked for this job their star reporter, brilliant, lovable
Byron R. Newton--later to become Assistant Secretary of the Treasury,
and afterward Collector of Customs in New York--one of the ablest
newspapermen of his time. If the Wrights proved to be fakers no one
could do a better job than “By” Newton at exposing them.
Other editors, too, decided that the time had come to get the “lowdown”
on the Wright brothers. By the time Newton reached the little boarding
place, the Tranquil House, in Manteo, he had been joined by two other
correspondents: William Hosier, of the New York _American_, and P. H.
McGowan, of the London _Daily Mail_. The next day two others arrived:
Arthur Ruhl, writer, and James H. Hare, photographer, for _Collier’s
Weekly_.
The newly arrived correspondents, noting the desolate isolation of
Kitty Hawk, thought it probable enough that the Wrights must prefer to
be let alone. Perhaps, they thought, if intruders came, the Wrights
wouldn’t fly at all. They decided that if the Wrights were secretive,
they themselves would be no less so. They would hide in the pine woods,
as near as possible to the Wright camp, and observe with field glasses
what happened. That meant a short walk to a wharf on Roanoke Island,
five miles by sailing boat to Haman’s Bay, across the sound, and then
a walk of a mile or so over the sand to the place where they should
secrete themselves. They made a dicker with a boatman to take them all
back and forth each day and act as their guide. Provided with food and
water, field glasses, and cameras, they set out about 4 o’clock each
morning from May 11 to May 14 to keep their vigil. Hour after hour they
fought mosquitoes and woodticks and sometimes were drenched by rain.
But to their astonishment they several times witnessed human flight.