11. “For some minutes,” wrote Newton, “the propeller blades continued
to flash in the sun, and then the machine rose obliquely into the air.
At first it came directly toward us, so that we could not tell how fast
it was going except that it appeared to increase rapidly in size as
it approached. In the excitement of this first flight, men trained to
observe details under all sorts of distractions forgot their cameras,
forgot their watches, forgot everything but this aerial monster
chattering over our heads.”
However, “Jimmy” Hare got a good photograph of that flight.
On May 14, the correspondents saw what no person on earth had ever seen
before--a flying-machine under complete control carrying _two_ men.
First Wilbur made a short flight with Charles W. Furnas as passenger,
and then Orville flew with Furnas for nearly three minutes.
Newton predicted in his diary just after that: “Some day Congress will
erect a monument here to these Wrights.”[11]
The last flight on May 14, made by Wilbur Wright, ended in an accident.
Wilbur had pulled a wrong lever. Repairs would have taken a week, and
as the time the brothers could spare had elapsed, the experiments
stopped. But after removing the engine and other machinery for shipment
to Dayton, the Wrights left the plane in the shed at Kitty Hawk,
thinking they might return. The ending of these trials brought no grief
to the correspondents who had been getting up before daylight each
morning, and returning to Manteo late each afternoon, footsore and
tired, with their dispatches still to be written.
One night’s dispatches had brought unexpected trouble for “By” Newton.
Though his report had been filed ahead of McGowan’s, in plenty of time
to be relayed from his paper’s New York office to Paris and appear
in the next morning’s issue of the Paris edition, a needless delay
occurred in New York. In consequence, Newton, through no fault of his
own, was “scooped” by McGowan the next day in the continental edition
of the London _Daily Mail_. When James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of
the New York _Herald_, observed that his Paris _Herald_ failed to have
any account of the sensational flights at Kitty Hawk the day before,
as reported in the rival _Daily Mail_, he was furious. During the two
seasons when the Wrights had flown a total of 160 miles at Huffman
prairie, Bennett, with scores of reporters at his disposal, had failed
to learn the truth of what the Wrights had done. But now when he
thought a reporter had missed a story about them, he did not wait to
make inquiries but promptly sent a cable to New York ordering Newton
suspended from the staff. Under Bennett’s way of conducting his papers,
suspension usually was a preliminary to permanent discharge.
Though he was reinstated after he had sent to Bennett a review of the
facts, along with some affidavits, Newton, all the rest of his life,
felt a grievance against Bennett and the _Herald_.
Incidentally, McGowan’s “scoop” in the continental edition of the
_Daily Mail_ which had so disturbed Bennett, was not accepted as truth
by everyone who read it. Charles A. Bertrand, in one of the Paris
papers, May 15, published this comment: “He [McGowan] depicts the
flight in a manner that does honor to his imagination. If the Wrights
hadn’t been seen in Europe, one would be justified in believing their
very existence as uncertain as their apparatus.”
During the several days the correspondents were at Kitty Hawk, the
Wrights knew they were being observed. From time to time they caught
glimpses of men’s heads over the hilltop in the distance. Moreover,
they heard each day, from members of a life-saving crew, just how many
visitors had come. But they simply thought it was a good joke on the
mysterious observers, whoever they were.
Arthur Ruhl, of _Collier’s_, had met the Wrights in Dayton about a year
before. On May 14, before the final flight, he came over to the camp.
But he said nothing about being a member of the group that had been
observing the flights.
The Wrights invited Ruhl to stay for lunch. But he declined. He seemed
to the Wrights ill at ease and anxious to get away. At a meeting with
him some time afterward they learned why. He had come against the
wishes of the other correspondents and was afraid he might give away
the fact that they were in the near-by woods.
On May 15, the day after the crash, when it was evident that there
would be no more flights, McGowan, of the _Daily Mail_, went to the
camp, accompanied by still another correspondent who had just arrived,
Gilson Gardner, of the Washington office of the Newspaper Enterprise
Association. McGowan remarked that he had once visited Octave Chanute’s
camp at Dune Park, near Chicago, in 1897 for the Chicago _Tribune_.
Another visitor at the camp, a day or two before that, was a young man
named J. C. Burkhardt, dressed in a brand-new outfit of hunting togs.
He was a college boy who had come all the way from Ithaca just to
satisfy his curiosity.
“What would you have done,” Orville Wright was asked, afterward, “if
all those correspondents had come right to your camp each day and sat
there to watch you?”
“We’d have had to go ahead just as if they weren’t there,” he replied.
“We couldn’t have delayed our work. There was too much to do and our
time was short.”
That the Wrights would have treated the correspondents politely
enough was indicated in a letter from Orville Wright to Byron Newton,
dated June 7, 1908. Immediately after his return to New York, Newton
had written graciously to the Wrights, enclosing clippings of his
dispatches to the _Herald_, and expressing his admiration for them and
their achievements.
“We were aware of the presence of newspapermen in the woods,” wrote
Orville in reply; “at least we had often been told that they were
there. Their presence, however, did not bother us in the least, and I
am only sorry that you did not come over to see us at our camp. The
display of a white flag would have disposed of the rifles and shotguns
with which the machine is reported to have been guarded.”
After publication of many dispatches from these eyewitnesses at Kitty
Hawk and front page headlines, it might have been expected that the
fact of human flight would now be generally accepted. As Newton had
written to his paper, there was “no longer any ground for questioning
the performance of these men and their wonderful machine.” Ruhl in
_Collier’s_ had told how the correspondents had informed the world
that “it was all right, the rumors true--that man could fly.” Yet even
such reports by leading journalists still did not convince the general
public. People began to concede that perhaps there _might_ be something
in it, but many newspapers still did not publish the news. When Newton
sent an article, some weeks later, on what he had seen at Kitty Hawk,
to a leading magazine, it came back to him with the editor’s comment:
“While your manuscript has been read with much interest, it does not
seem to qualify either as fact or fiction.”
XIV
END OF DISBELIEF
The Wrights decided that Wilbur should go to France to make the
demonstrations there. Orville would stay in America to build the
machine for the United States Government and test it at Fort Myer, near
Washington. Wilbur did not return to Dayton from Kitty Hawk but went to
New York where he sailed for Europe on May 21.
Orville arrived at Fort Myer in August. Two mechanics, Taylor and
Furnas, who were to assist him, had reached there a few days earlier.
Army officers designated a shed on the Fort Myer grounds for use in
assembling and housing the plane.
Orville’s first flight was on September 3, 1908. He went from the
Cosmos Club, where he was staying, to Fort Myer by street car. It is
doubtful if any of the others on that car suspected that this fellow
passenger was on his way to perform a miracle. When he reached Fort
Myer, Orville got the impression that not all the Army officers present
thought he would succeed in meeting the tests required by the contract.
The area from which the flights would be made was only about 700 by
1,000 feet. Neither of the Wrights had ever before made flights within
so small a space.
Considering that this was an opportunity to see the outstanding
wonder of the century, the crowd that strung about the parade ground
was small. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., estimated it for his father, then
President, at less than one thousand. Indeed, it was probably much less
than that.
Orville circled the field one and one-half times on that first test and
was in the air only one minute, eleven seconds; but the crowd “went
crazy.” “When the plane first rose,” said Roosevelt, Jr., in describing
the event, years afterward, “the crowd’s gasp of astonishment was not
alone at the wonder of it, but because it was so unexpected. I’ll never
forget the impression the sound from the crowd made on me. It was a
sound of complete surprise.”
When he landed after this flight it was Orville’s turn to be
astonished. Three or four supposedly “hard-boiled” newspapermen who
rushed up to interview him had been so stirred by witnessing the
“impossible” that each of them had tears streaming down his cheeks.
(Those who witnessed this flight might have been prepared for what
they saw and less surprised, since Wilbur Wright for more than a month
had been making flights in France--told about in a later chapter--and
some of these were reported in the newspapers. But the brief newspaper
accounts of Wilbur’s flights seldom if ever had first page display and
were not treated as important news. On August 9, the day after Wilbur’s
first flight, the New York _Times_ had no mention of the event, though
it gave first page space to a dispatch from Canton, Ohio, about a
balloon trip, and to a dispatch from Berlin about the German Kaiser
contributing to a fund for building another Zeppelin airship.)
Nor did newspapers show too much excitement about this great public
demonstration of practical aviation. It was not considered front page
news even by Washington papers. The New York _World_ account was on
page five and most of the report was not about the wonder of the
flying-machine, but about the behavior of the crowd, described as in
fear of being hit by what the _World_ called “the vessel.”
Many thousands were present on the second day of the tests when Orville
flew about three miles in four minutes, fifteen seconds. After one of
these flights, a reporter, it was said, got in touch with Professor
Simon Newcomb who, a few years before, had so irrefutably explained why
flying was impossible. The reporter wanted to know if Professor Newcomb
thought passenger planes would be the next step.
“No,” Newcomb was reported to have replied, “because no plane could
ever carry the weight of anyone besides the pilot.” It might have been
expected that by this time Professor Newcomb would have become more
cautious!
Orville made a short flight on September 7, and two flights the next
day; one of eleven minutes, ten seconds; the other of seven minutes,
thirty-four seconds. On the morning of September 9, he circled the
field fifty-seven times in fifty-seven minutes, twenty-five seconds.
Later in the day, he circled the field fifty-five times in one hour,
two and one-quarter minutes. Then he surprised and delighted his
friend, Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, by inviting him to go with him for
a flight. They were in the air six minutes, twenty-four seconds, and
circled the field six and one-half times. All three of these flights
on the ninth established new world endurance records; two of them for
flights with pilot alone, and the third for pilot with passenger.
Orville made a flight of one hour, five minutes, fifty-two seconds on
September 10, rising to a height of 200 feet and exceeding the world
endurance record made by himself the day before. On the next day he
again broke the one-man endurance record by flying for one hour, ten
minutes, and twenty-four seconds, while circling the field fifty-seven
times and describing two figure eights. On the twelfth, he increased
the two-man endurance record by taking with him Major George O. Squier,
Acting Chief Signal Officer, for a flight of nine minutes, six seconds.
Immediately after that, Orville made a flight alone. He circled the
field seventy-one times in one hour and fifteen minutes--again breaking
the endurance record for one-man flight. It was estimated that he
reached a height of 300 feet.
The next and final flight, September 17, ended in tragedy. Lieutenant
Thomas Selfridge, a twenty-six-year-old West Point graduate, from
San Francisco, had been assigned at his own request to go along as
passenger. Before they had been in the air more than three or four
minutes, and while in the fourth round at a height of about 125 feet
over the field, Orville heard, or felt, a light tapping in the rear
part of the machine. He thought it was in the chain drive. A hurried
glance revealed nothing wrong there; but he decided to shut off the
power and descend. Hardly had he reached this decision when two big
thumps, which shook the machine violently, followed by the machine
swerving to the right, showed that something had gone wrong. He
immediately shut off the motor. Directly ahead was a gulley filled with
small trees, a dangerous landing spot. He decided on a half-circle
to the left, to land on the parade grounds, and it was then that he
discovered that the tail was inoperative. By twisting the wings to
give the greatest possible resistance to the left one, he did succeed
in turning the machine until it faced directly into the field. In this
maneuver the machine had descended about one-third of the way toward
the ground without any indication of serious trouble. Orville moved the
lever to straighten the wing tips, to proceed straight ahead. Then the
machine suddenly turned down in front. For fifty feet it was headed
almost directly toward the ground, although the front elevator was
turned to its limit. When about twenty-five feet from the ground the
machine began to right itself, and if there had been another twenty
feet to go, or possibly even ten feet, it might have landed safely.
But the recovery of control came too late. The machine hit the ground
with such impact that Lieutenant Selfridge was fatally injured and
died a few hours later. His skull had been fractured by a blow against
one of the wooden uprights of the framework. Orville, though at first
believed to be perhaps fatally hurt, had miraculously escaped with what
then appeared to be only a fractured left leg and four broken ribs. He
never lost consciousness and his first concern was about Selfridge.
(Not until twelve years later, after suffering severe pains, did
Orville learn, from a careful X-ray examination in a famous medical
clinic, that the Fort Myer accident had also caused three fractures in
the hip bones, besides a dislocation of one of them.)
Now that an airplane passenger had been killed, the Fort Myer
demonstrations at last reached the front pages of newspapers.
The day after the accident, the mechanics, Taylor and Fumas, brought
the broken propeller and some of the other broken parts to Orville’s
bedside. From these parts he was able to determine the cause of the
accident. A new pair of propellers, several inches longer than any
previously used, had been installed just before the flight. The trouble
started when a longitudinal crack developed in one blade of the right
propeller. This crack permitted the blade to flatten and lose much of
its thrust, with the result that the pressures on the two blades became
unequal, causing a severe vibration of the propeller shaft housing. The
vibration loosened one of the stay wires that held in position the tube
in which the propeller shaft turned. Then the propeller began to swing
sidewise and forward until a blade hit and tore loose the stay wire
to the vertical tail, permitting the tail to take a nearly horizontal
position. A pressure on the tail’s underside lifted the rear of the
machine, thus causing it to dart for the ground.
While Orville was recovering from his injuries, an acquaintance, C. H.
Claudy, visited him and asked:
“Has it got your nerve?”
“Nerve?” repeated Orville, not quite understanding. “Oh, you mean will
I be _afraid_ to fly again? The only thing I’m afraid of is that I
can’t get well soon enough to finish those tests next year.”
The cost had been high, but one result of those incomplete tests was
that widespread incredulity in the United States about the Wrights’
achievements now finally ceased. At last, everyone, including even
the most skeptical scientists, was convinced that a practical
flying-machine was a reality.
XV
WHEN WILBUR WRIGHT WON FRANCE
Wilbur Wright reached France in May, 1908, to fly the Wright machine
that for a year had been in its crate at the customs warehouse in
Le Havre. If he accomplished what he expected, final details of the
Wrights’ business arrangement with the recently formed French syndicate
would be carried out.
As during the previous stay, when both the Wright brothers were
in Europe, Wilbur kept in close touch with Hart O. Berg, European
associate of Charles R. Flint & Co., the Wrights’ business
representatives in all except the English-speaking countries. One of
the first questions to be settled was where the actual demonstration of
the Wright plane should take place. Naturally, there were not yet any
areas in Europe designated as flying fields.
The locality for the flights was determined in consequence of the
courtesies of Léon Bollée, an automobile manufacturer, who had a
factory at Le Mans, about 125 miles from Paris.[12] When Bollée learned
that Wilbur Wright was in France and looking for a suitable field, he
sent a message to Wilbur suggesting that a satisfactory place could
doubtless be found near Le Mans where there was a great stretch of
level country. He added that Wilbur would be welcome to use a wing of
the Bollée factory for assembling his plane. Wilbur Wright and Hart O.
Berg took a train to Le Mans where they spent several hours “looking
for a good pasture.” The most nearly ideal field for their purpose was
a large open area at Auvours, about five miles from Le Mans, used by
the French war department for testing artillery; but it was not then
available. Another place they noticed was the Hunaudières race track.
The oval field within the track appeared to be large enough for their
needs. There were a few trees, but Wilbur said he could easily steer
clear of them. The next day, in Paris, M. Nicolai, president of the
Jockey Club and principal owner of the Hunaudières race track, agreed
to the use of the field, at a monthly rental, for as long as needed.
Now the crated Wright plane was shipped from Le Havre to the Bollée
factory and, late in June, Wilbur set to work there. He assembled the
working parts and put the motor and cooling system to a series of
rigid tests. On July 4 Wilbur met with a painful accident. A rubber
connection in the cooling system burst and he was badly scalded on his
left arm by hot water. This was one of several unavoidable delays that
made many skeptics think it would be a long time before Wilbur would
attempt a public demonstration. One Paris newspaper said: “_Le bluff
continue_.” Wilbur had been quoted as saying that the tests would be
“child’s play,” and “_jeu d’enfant_” was often repeated, with sarcasm,
by the incredulous.
Painful as his burns were, Wilbur saw a funny side to the accident and
sent home a hilarious letter about the French doctor who came “with a
keg of oil” to apply to the blisters.
Shortly afterward, Wilbur wanted a coiled wire spring to insert in a
hose used in the cooling system, to prevent the hose from collapsing
from suction. A French mechanic who had been assisting him went with
him to a near-by factory to have the coil made. Not knowing any French,
Wilbur could not follow the long conversation he overheard, but they
came away without the coil. It seemed strange to Wilbur that the kind
of wire needed should not have been easily obtainable and he spoke of
this to the man who had been his interpreter.
But, said the Frenchman, the wire _was_ available.
“Then,” asked Wilbur, in surprise, “why didn’t we get it?”
Oh, explained the Frenchman, because when he and the man at the factory
talked it over it didn’t seem to them that using a coiled wire spring
in the way Wilbur had in mind was a sound idea!
While working on his machine at the Bollée factory, Wilbur did
something, probably just because it seemed the natural thing to do,
with no thought of the impression it would make, that delighted the
hearts of the factory employees. He kept the same hours that the others
did and his whole behavior was as if he were simply one more workman.
When the whistle blew for the noon hour, he knocked off along with
the others, and went, in overalls, to lunch. This lack of any sign of
aloofness caused much favorable comment.
Wilbur’s greatest admirer, however, was Léon Bollée himself. Though
they had no common language, they managed to exchange ideas and formed
a warm friendship. Bollée, a jolly rotund man with a saucy little
beard, was ever ready to be of any service. Incidentally, though Bollée
had no thought of personal gain when he generously offered the use of
space in his factory, the fact that Wilbur worked on his plane there
did not hurt the sale of Bollée cars.
But the work was soon transferred from the Bollée factory to the field
at Hunaudières where a hastily constructed hangar had been built.
Another item of preparation was the setting up of a launching derrick,
similar to the one the Wrights had first used in their experiments
at the Huffman pasture. Huge weights were attached at one end of a
rope which ran over pulleys and had a metal ring at the other end to
be caught on a hook at the front of the plane. When the plane shot
forward, the rope automatically dropped away. As at previous trials,
the plane when ready to take off rested on a small truck having two
flanged wheels that ran on a single-rail, iron-shod, wooden track,
about sixty feet long.
Not until August 8, did Wilbur attempt his first flight. A good-sized
crowd was present, the majority from Le Mans and the near-by
countryside, but it included many members of the Aéro Club of France
and various newspaper representatives from Paris.
In describing the scene, years afterward, Hart O. Berg said: “Wilbur
Wright’s quiet self-confidence was reassuring. One thing that, to me at
least, made his appearance all the more dramatic, was that he was not
dressed as if about to do something daring or unusual. He, of course,
had no special pilot’s helmet or jacket, since no such garb yet
existed, but appeared in the ordinary gray suit he usually wore, and
a cap. And he had on, as he nearly always did when not in overalls, a
high, starched collar.”
At least one man among the spectators felt certain the flight would not
be a success. That was M. Archdeacon, prominent in the Aéro Club. So
sure was M. Archdeacon that Wilbur Wright would be deflated that, as
the time set for the flight approached, he was explaining to those near
him in the grandstand just what was “wrong” about the design of the
Wright machine, and why it could not be expected to fly well.
Wilbur’s immediate preparations had been made with great care. First
of all, the starting rail had been set precisely in the direction of
and against the wind. The engine was started by two men, each pulling
down a blade of the two propellers and the plane was held back by a
wire attached to a hook and releasing trigger near the pilot’s seat.
After the engine was warmed up, Fleury, Berg’s chauffeur, took hold of
the right wing. Wilbur released the trigger and the plane was pulled
forward by the falling weights. Fleury kept it in balance until the
accelerating speed left him behind. By the time it had reached the end
of the rail, the plane left the track with enough speed to sustain
itself and climb.
At some distance, directly in front of Wilbur as he started to rise,
were tall trees, but they gave him no concern. He bore off easily to
the left and went ahead in a curve that brought him back almost over
the starting point. Then he swung to the right and made another great
turn. Most of the time he was thirty or thirty-five feet above the
ground. He was in the air only one minute and forty-five seconds, but
he had made history.