show itself in a more pernicious form in later acts of Dr. Walcott.
If Langley had lived, the relations between the Smithsonian and the
Wrights would doubtless have continued to be marked by mutual respect
and consideration. But after Dr. Langley’s death, the attitude of the
Smithsonian began to change. The Institution started a subtle campaign
to belittle the Wrights, to try to take from them much of the credit
for having both produced and demonstrated the first machine capable of
flight, and for having done the original research that made the machine
possible. Indeed, the Institution even went so far as to issue false
and misleading statements.
One of these was in connection with the first award of a Langley medal,
publicly presented to the Wrights in February, 1910. In referring to
that presentation, the Annual Report for the year 1910 (page 23),
by the Secretary of the Institution, quoted Wilbur Wright as making
a statement not made by him on that occasion at all, but used in
a different connection at another time. The improper use of that
quotation helped to create a false impression over the world that the
Wrights had acknowledged indebtedness to Langley’s scientific work.
The truth was that Wilbur Wright had in a private letter mentioned
indebtedness to Langley, not for scientific data but for the fact that
it was encouraging to know that the head of a scientific institution
believed human flight to be possible. (Langley’s published work in the
field of aerodynamics dealt with measurements of air pressures on flat
surfaces only--and later experiments proved even that to be incorrect.)
The Smithsonian has more than once mentioned the award of the Langley
medal to the Wrights as a proof of the Institution’s disposition to
honor them. But the truth is that the Langley medal was established
to honor Langley, not the Wrights. Neither in the award nor in the
presentation of the medal to the Wright Brothers was there any
suggestion that the Wrights were the first to fly.
In 1910, Dr. Walcott made it evident that the Institution actually did
not want the original Wright plane of 1903 as an exhibit. This could
be seen in letters he sent to Wilbur Wright in the spring of 1910. The
first of these, dated March 7, said:[16]
The National Museum is endeavoring to enlarge its collections
illustrating the progress of aviation and, in this connection,
it has been suggested that you might be willing to deposit one
of your machines, or a model thereof, for exhibition purposes.
The great public interest manifested in this science and the
numerous inquiries from visitors for the Wright machine make it
manifest that if one were placed on exhibition here it would
form _one of the most interesting_ specimens in the national
collections. It is sincerely hoped that you may find it
possible to accede to this request.
Wilbur Wright replied as follows:
My Dear Dr. Walcott: ... If you will inform us just what your
preference would be in the matter of a flier for the National
Museum we will see what would be possible in the way of meeting
your wishes. At present nothing is in condition for such use.
But there are three possibilities. We might construct a small
model showing the general construction of the aeroplane, but
with a dummy power plant. Or we can reconstruct the 1903
machine with which the first flights were made at Kitty Hawk.
Most of the parts are still in existence. This machine would
occupy a space 40 feet by 20 feet by 8 feet. Or a model showing
the general design of the latter machine could be constructed.
The peculiar attitude of the Smithsonian then began to appear. In his
next letter to Wilbur Wright, dated April 11, 1910, Dr. Walcott wrote:
... The matter of the representation of the Wright airplane
has been very carefully considered by Mr. George C. Maynard,
who has charge of the Division of Technology in the National
Museum. I told him to indicate what he would like for the
exhibit, in order that the matter might be placed clearly
before you and your brother. In his report he says:
“The following objects illustrating the Wright inventions would
make a very valuable addition to the aeronautical exhibits in
the Museum:
“1. A quarter-size model of the aeroplane used by Orville
Wright at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September, 1908. Such a model
equipped with a dummy power plant, as suggested by the Wrights,
would be quite suitable.
“2. If there are any radical differences between the machine
referred to and the one used at Kitty Hawk, a second model of
the latter machine would be very appropriate.
“3. A full-sized Wright aeroplane. Inasmuch as the machine
used at Fort Myer[17] has attracted such world-wide interest,
that machine, if it can be repaired or reconstructed, would
seem most suitable. If, however, the Wright brothers think
the Kitty Hawk machine would answer the purpose better, their
judgment _might_ decide the question.
“4 If the Wright brothers have an engine of an early type
used by them which could be placed in a floor case for close
inspection that will be desirable.”
The engine of the Langley Aerodrome is now on exhibition in a
glass case and the original full-size machine is soon to be
hung in one of the large halls. The three Langley quarter-size
models are on exhibition. The natural plan would be to install
the different Wright machines along with the Langley machines,
making the exhibit illustrate two very important steps in the
history of the aeronautical art.
The request of Mr. Maynard is rather a large one, but we will
have to leave it to your discretion as to what you think it is
practicable for you to do.
Sincerely yours,
CHARLES D. WALCOTT,
Secretary.
If Dr. Walcott’s suggestions, that the Wrights provide a reproduction
in model size of their 1908 plane and the 1908 plane itself, had
been accepted, then the proposed exhibits in the National Museum
of models and full-size machines by Langley and the Wrights could
easily have been of a nature to give a wrong impression. Surely a
good many uninformed visitors to the museum would hardly have known,
or stopped to think, that it is one thing to build and fly a small
model plane, but an altogether different problem to build and fly a
plane, of the same design, large enough to carry a man. Small models of
flying-machines were flown by the Frenchman, Pénaud, as early as 1871.
But a larger machine of the same design could not be flown--as the
Wrights themselves in early boyhood had found out. Likewise, the fact
that Langley flew a steam-driven model in 1896, and a gas-driven model
in 1903, would not indicate to anyone who understands such matters
that a full-size machine of the same design as either of the models
could support itself in the air. Langley’s own experiments had proved
how great is the gap between success with a model and with a larger
machine. His full-size machine of 1903, of the same design as the model
flown earlier that year, collapsed the moment it was launched. But
suppose an uninformed visitor noticed, side by side, a Langley model
plane of 1903, and a reproduction in model size of the Wright machine
flown with a pilot in 1908. If he hadn’t read the labels carefully, or
if the labels didn’t go into enough detail to make the facts clear,
couldn’t he easily have received the false impression that Langley
had been at least five years ahead of the Wrights? And if the visitor
didn’t know that the Langley full-size machine of 1903 never flew,
wouldn’t the sight of it, alongside the Wright machine flown in 1908,
have seemed to confirm the wrong impression? Perhaps, however, that was
the impression Dr. Walcott wanted museum visitors to receive!
The Walcott letter said, it may be noted, that if there were “any
radical differences” between the first Wright machine and the
one flown in 1908, then a “model” of the first machine might be
appropriate. But since there were no radical differences between the
1903 and 1908 machines, not even a small-sized model of the first
machine ever to be flown was being asked for. The Wrights took the
letter to mean that the Smithsonian did not want an exhibit that would
emphasize the fact of their having flown a successful, man-carrying
machine as early as 1903. They thought it was significant that the
letter did not say that the Wrights’ own opinion would decide which
machine was more suitable, but only that their judgment “might” decide
the question. Because of their strong belief that the Smithsonian was
showing a prejudiced attitude, they made no reply to the Walcott letter.
There was no further correspondence on this subject between the
Smithsonian and the Wrights until six years later. In 1916, the
original Wright plane was exhibited at the dedication of the new
buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Alexander
Graham Bell, a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, saw the plane and
expressed astonishment. It was the first he knew that it was still in
existence. Shortly afterward, in a conversation with Orville Wright, he
asked why the plane was not being exhibited by the Smithsonian.
“Because,” replied Orville, “the Smithsonian does not want it.”
“Indeed the Smithsonian does want it!” exclaimed Dr. Bell. He was
sincere in thinking so and requested Dr. Walcott to get in touch with
Orville Wright.
Walcott on December 23, 1916, wrote what Orville considered a
perfunctory letter saying: “... the importance of securing for the
National Museum the Wright aeroplane which was exhibited at the opening
of the new buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology _has
been suggested to me_.”
Orville Wright replied that he would be glad to take up the question
with Dr. Walcott in a personal interview. A few days later the two met
in Washington, but it was soon evident to Orville that Dr. Walcott’s
attitude had not changed; that he did not want that original Wright
machine which had flown exhibited beside the Langley machine which had
failed to fly.
When Orville found that Walcott’s attitude had not changed in the six
years since the former correspondence, he gave the question no further
consideration.
Meanwhile, in 1914, after the Federal courts had upheld the Wright
patents in the suits against Glenn H. Curtiss and others, and
recognized the Wrights as “pioneers” in the practical art of flying
with heavier-than-air machines, an astounding thing happened.
A few days after the final court decision had been delivered, Lincoln
Beachey, a Curtiss stockholder, telegraphed to Secretary Walcott,
of the Smithsonian, asking permission to attempt a flight with the
original Langley machine. That proposal was not accepted; but two
months later, when Glenn H. Curtiss himself said he would like to
test the Langley machine, his request was granted. The Smithsonian
entered into a deal with Curtiss in which he was to receive a payment
of $2,000, and was permitted to take the original Langley plane from
the Smithsonian to his shop at Hammondsport, New York. There he made
numerous vital changes in the machine, using knowledge of aerodynamics
discovered by the Wrights but never possessed by Langley. No
information is available to indicate that the Smithsonian offered any
objection to these alterations being made. The Smithsonian’s official
observer, in connection with the tests of the machine, was Dr. A. F.
Zahm, who had been technical expert for Curtiss in the recent lawsuits
and was to serve again in that capacity in another suit soon to follow.
No one officially representing any disinterested scientific body was
present during the time the changes in the machine were made nor during
the time it was tested.
It seems highly improbable that Dr. Walcott could have been so
unintelligent or so uninformed as not to know about the recent decision
of the U. S. Court of Appeals against Curtiss; and equally improbable
that he could have been unaware of Zahm’s relations with Curtiss as
expert witness and adviser. One may well wonder, too, if Dr. Walcott
could have failed to understand why Curtiss had recently become
interested in testing the Langley plane. In hundreds of pages of direct
testimony in the lawsuits, neither Curtiss nor Zahm had mentioned
Langley’s name, though they had more than once referred to Chanute,
Maxim, Henson, Marriott, Boulton, Pilcher, Harte, and other pioneers.
One may further wonder if Walcott could have been unaware when, in
1913, the Smithsonian awarded the Langley medal to Curtiss, that he had
already been pronounced an infringer of the Wright patents by a Federal
court, and that another decision in a higher court was pending. It
almost looked as if there might have been an intent to try to influence
that decision.
Curtiss had a strong motive for wanting to make it appear that the
Langley plane could have flown. The United States Court of Appeals had
held that the Wrights were pioneers in the field of heavier-than-air
flying-machines, and that therefore their patent claims were entitled
to a “liberal interpretation.” If Curtiss could demonstrate, or seem
to demonstrate, that a machine capable of flight had been built
before the Wright machine, then he could weaken their claims, to his
financial advantage, in a patent suit he expected to have to defend. In
consequence of the important changes that were made, Curtiss finally
was able to make several short hops, of less than five seconds, with
the reconstructed machine, in May and June, 1914, over Lake Keuka, at
Hammondsport, N. Y. Then the Smithsonian, in its annual report of the
U. S. National Museum for that year, falsely stated that the original
Langley plane had been flown “without modification”! And the annual
report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1914, with equally glaring
falsity, said: “It [the Langley machine] has demonstrated that _with
its original structure and power_, it is capable of flying with a
pilot and _several hundred pounds of useful load_. It is the _first
aeroplane_ in the history of the world of which this can truthfully be
said”! (Italics supplied.)
The Institution’s annual report for 1915 continued to repeat such
untruths. “The tests thus far made have shown that former Secretary
Langley had succeeded in building the first aeroplane capable of
sustained free flight with a man.”
Similar misstatements were made in the Institution’s reports for 1916,
1917, 1918, and afterward.
Altogether here had been something probably unique in scientific
procedure. A test was made purporting to determine if the original
Langley plane was capable of flight; but the test was not made with
the machine as designed and built by Langley, nor with an exact copy
of it. No disinterested official observer was present. Misstatements
were published about the results, and no information was furnished,
regarding the changes made, to enable anyone to learn the truth.
To have made one more honest test of the Langley plane that had
immediately crashed each time it was launched over the Potomac would
have been permissible. But for a scientific institution officially to
distort scientific facts, and in collaboration with a man who stood
to gain financially by what he was doing, has been called worse than
scandalous.
After the Langley machine had been restored as nearly as possible to
its original state, it was placed on exhibition by the Smithsonian.
Soon afterward it bore a label that falsely proclaimed it to be “the
first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of
sustained free flight.”
But neither in connection with the exhibit of the Langley plane nor
in any report of the Smithsonian Institution was there any hint of
the fundamental changes made at Hammondsport, without which the plane
could not possibly have carried its weight. One of these changes had to
do with the supporting posts on the wings. Professor Langley had not
known--indeed, no one knew until the Wrights’ wind-tunnel experiments
established the facts--where the center of the air pressure would
be on a curved surface, and consequently he had failed to place his
wing-trussing posts where they were most needed. In the attempts to fly
the machine over the Potomac, in 1903, the wing that bore the greater
part of the weight had each time collapsed at the moment the apparatus
left the starting platform. (Lacking the knowledge about curved
surfaces that later was available, those in charge of the 1903 trials
had blamed the trouble on the launching apparatus.) At the Hammondsport
tests, the trussing posts were moved thirty inches rearward. This
brought the guy posts almost exactly in the same plane with the center
of pressure on the wings and thus eliminated the backward pull that had
wrecked the machine in the 1903 tests.
Three fundamental changes were made in the design of the wings
themselves: (1) The camber was greatly changed; (2) the shape of the
leading edge was entirely different; (3) the aspect ratio--the ratio
of span to chord--was increased. These three features are the most
important characteristics in determining the efficiency of a wing.
The change of the camber of itself may increase the efficiency of a
wing by thirty per cent. And not only were the wings changed as to
design, but they were strengthened by various means of reinforcing and
trussing not used by Langley. Even the cloth on the wings was improved
by varnishing, to make the wings more efficient. Langley had not used
varnish on the cloth.
Numerous changes were made in other parts of the machine. The large
fixed vertical keel surface, situated below the main frame in 1903,
was entirely omitted in 1914. This omission improved the machine’s
stability. A different kind of rudder was used. The position of the
“Pénaud tail” used by Langley was raised about ten inches to increase
the stability of the machine, and was connected to a modern steering
post, to give better control. The forward corners of the original
Langley propellers were cut off in the manner of the early Wright
propellers to increase their efficiency. As the system of control
Langley had used was not adequate, the aileron system, covered by
Wright patents, a system unknown to Langley, was added.
How did all these changes become known? Orville Wright called attention
to them in an affidavit in 1915 in the Wright-Curtiss lawsuit. One
way to learn most of the facts is astonishingly simple. All that
is necessary to any observer who knows what to look for is to make
careful comparisons of the Smithsonian photographs of the original
Langley machine with Smithsonian photographs of the machine tested at
Hammondsport.
It was learned, too, that even the engine used by Langley was changed
in several respects. A modern type carburetor, a new intake manifold, a
magneto ignition, and a modern radiator were installed.
Though all these changes and many others were made in the machine
at Hammondsport, the Smithsonian published only a few of them--the
less important. It did not tell of the fundamental changes. And the
Institution made statements that, by implication, practically amounted
to a denial that any changes of importance had been made.
By omitting from its published reports at the time and for many
years afterward, the facts about the changes in the Langley machine,
the Smithsonian Institution succeeded in deluding the public. If
the stories about these fake tests had been issued by Curtiss, who
conducted them, or by an organization less well known than the
Smithsonian, they might not have been taken seriously. But when
false and misleading announcements were backed by the prestige of a
famous scientific institution, it was possible to have the fraudulent
character of the experiments pass generally unsuspected. When the
reports of Secretary Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution said the
“_original_” Langley machine had made “flights,” and when the report of
the National Museum said the Langley machine had been flown “without
modification,” such statements, untrue though they were, naturally
carried weight. Indeed, the misstatements were so widely accepted as
fact that they began to find their way into school text-books and into
encyclopedias.
Griffith Brewer, the English aeronaut, delivered a lecture before the
Royal Aeronautical Society in London, in October, 1921, and exposed
the fraudulent nature of the Hammondsport tests. In this lecture he
mentioned many of the vital changes made in the Langley plane before
any attempt was made to fly it. Dr. Walcott made a statement in reply
to Brewer. Up to this time Orville Wright had thought that Walcott
could have been ignorant of those changes; but after reading the
Walcott statement he was convinced that there was nothing accidental
or unintentional about the misstatements published by the Smithsonian
regarding the tests at Hammondsport.
While the Kitty Hawk plane rested in its storage place, subject to
possible fire hazards, officials of the Science Museum at South
Kensington, London, England, had made requests to have the machine
for exhibition there. After Orville Wright became convinced that none
of the Members or Regents of the Smithsonian Institution or any other
influential persons were enough interested in establishing the facts
in controversy to go to the trouble of making an investigation, he
reluctantly decided, in 1923, to accede to the requests from London. In
reply to letters deploring this decision, he has expressed his reasons
as follows:
I believe my course in sending our Kitty Hawk machine to a
foreign museum is the only way of correcting the history of the
flying-machine, which by false and misleading statements has
been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution.
In its campaign to discredit others in the flying art, the
Smithsonian has issued scores of these false and misleading
statements. They can be proved to be false and misleading from
documents. But the people of today do not take the trouble to
examine this evidence.
With this machine in any American museum the national pride
would be satisfied; nothing further would be done and the
Smithsonian would continue its propaganda. In a foreign museum
this machine will be a constant reminder of the reason of its
being there, and after the people and petty jealousies of
this day are gone, the historians of the future may examine
impartially the evidence and make history accord with it.
Your regret that this old machine must leave our country can
hardly be so great as my own.
Reluctant to carry out his intention to send the Kitty Hawk plane out
of the country, Orville Wright in 1925 proposed that the controversy
be settled through the investigations of an impartial committee. But
the suggestion got no response. He wrote a letter, on May 14, 1925, to
Chief Justice William Howard Taft, as Chancellor of the Smithsonian
Institution, in the hope that it might yet be possible to have an
impartial hearing. In this letter, after reviewing the relations of the
Wrights and the Smithsonian, he said:
It was not until 1921 that I became convinced that the
officials of the Smithsonian, at least Dr. Walcott, were fully
acquainted with the character of the tests at Hammondsport. I
had thought up to that time that they might have been ignorant
of the fundamental changes which had been incorporated in the
machine before these tests were made, and that when these
changes were pointed out to them they would hasten to correct
their erroneous reports. They did not do this, but have
continued to repeat their early statements. By these the public
has been led to think that flights were made in 1914 with the
original Langley machine, with no changes, excepting such as
were necessary to attach floats for the new system of launching.
When the proofs on both sides concerning these changes are
shown, I do not think it will take you five minutes to make up
your mind whether the changes were made and whether they were
of importance.
It seems to me possible that you as Chancellor of the
Smithsonian Institution may wish me to present personally to
you my evidence on these points and to have Dr. Walcott present
at the same time to give his proofs to the contrary. It may be
a way of cutting short a long and bitter controversy.