In between mishaps, Beachey set records for altitude and speed, astonishing the thousands who regularly came to see him perform. Beachey’s showmanship outdid even Baldwin’s. In 1906, just eleven days after he had narrowly escaped death in Cleveland when a propeller cut the gas bag and sent him plummeting one thousand feet to the ground, Beachey drove his airship over the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Congress suspended business for an hour “in joyous, neck craning contemplation.” Later, Washingtonians took to pinning a paper to their lapels that read, “Yes, I saw it.” Beachey then proceeded to the White House, where he landed on the lawn. After determining President Roosevelt was not at home, Beachey returned to the Capitol, landed nearby, and was treated to lunch by some senators and representatives.
But Thomas Baldwin never backed away from a fight. With Beachey and Knabenshue now his competitors, Baldwin pushed forward with his airship fleet to win back the headlines. After the earthquake destroyed his San Francisco factory in April 1906, he journeyed east to talk over the idea with Curtiss. The talks went so well that Baldwin decided to relocate his manufacturing facility to Hammondsport.
So successful were airships that Baldwin convinced some substantial portion of the general public and an even larger percentage of congressmen that military balloons were the future of aviation, and they began to lose interest in fixed-wing aircraft entirely.
* * *
*1 While Baldwin is generally credited as the inventor of the flexible parachute, he never bothered to take out a patent, a practice he would continue in his research with airships.
*2 At first, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, who put up the prize, balked at paying because Santos-Dumont had finished ten seconds over the allotted thirty minutes to complete the circuit. But the time included a one-minute-forty-second delay in grasping the rope to secure the airship. After Santos-Dumont shrugged off the prize, claiming that he had intended to give it to the poor anyway, Deutsch de la Meurthe paid up. Santos-Dumont split the prize money between the poor and the workmen who built and maintained the craft.
*3 Equal to $2.5 million in today’s dollars.
*4 Beachey gave a number of interviews beginning in his late teens in which he recounted some details of his early life. While the essentials seemed to have been true, he was as addicted as his employer to exaggeration.
Where No Man Had Gone Before
As Langley and Baldwin had discovered, creating thrust in the air was another problem for which there was no practical model. Wilbur also thought initially to adapt the sort of short, stubby propeller that powered ships, but, like Baldwin, he soon realized that propulsion was one of the areas in which fluid dynamics and aerodynamics diverged.1 An aircraft would need a longer, thinner device, essentially an airfoil turned to the vertical where lift was converted to thrust. So only weeks after the Wrights returned to Dayton in fall 1902, Orville was at work fashioning an even more precise wind tunnel from which to obtain measurements to design their propulsion system. Eventually, the brothers constructed a cambered pair of propellers out of laminated spruce and then mounted them on sprocketed bicycle chains, twisting one of the chains so that the propellers spun in opposite directions.
The motor seemed to them the simplest part of the puzzle. Any engine that could generate what they had calculated was the minimum eight to nine horsepower and weigh less than 160 pounds would do just fine. The motor would be water cooled and have no carburetor. Gasoline would drip into the cylinders from a tank mounted above the motor and then mix with air and vaporize due to the heat of the engine. Although the basic design was Orville’s, to do the actual machine work and construction the Wrights used their mechanic, Charlie Taylor.
Wilbur Wright’s relationship with Octave Chanute during this period remained cordial but also evidenced growing evasiveness. Chanute seemed to have realized that in Wilbur, he was dealing not with a malleable youngster but instead with a confident, strong-willed man who might well be reluctant to share research with anyone he considered a potential competitor or in fact to follow any course that conflicted with his own plans. So, while urging Wilbur to patent his and Orville’s invention—which the brothers had every intention of doing anyway—he tried to find ways to bring their work into the light. At their first meeting in 1901, he had convinced Wilbur to write two short articles, “Angle of Incidence,” which was published in Aeronautical Journal, and “Die Wagerechte Lage Wahrend des Gleitfluges,” (“The Horizontal Position During Gliding”) published in Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen. Neither of these was particularly elucidatory but they did enter Wilbur in the lists of aviation experimenters.
In September of that year, Chanute asked Wilbur to address the Western Society of Engineers on the gliding experiments. Chanute was president of the group and Wilbur agreed. Although this talk was a good deal more expansive than either of the articles and Wilbur went into some detail about the errors he suspected in Lilienthal’s tables, he sloughed over the most important feature of the Kitty Hawk experiments, noting merely, “Our system of twisting the surfaces to regulate the lateral balance was tried and found to be much more effective than shifting the operator’s body.” The talk was reprinted in the group’s journal in December 1901 and then in the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report for 1902.
At this point, as Wilbur’s voluminous correspondence bears out, he continued to trust Chanute and exhibited not the slightest hesitation in sharing knowledge. In 1901, for example, Wilbur wrote nearly two dozen letters in which he gave extremely detailed explanations of his theories, experimental results, attempts to solve remaining problems, and even the measurements from which he and Orville were working. Wilbur went so far as to agree to publish results of their wind tunnel tests, the most significant and proprietary data they had produced. The only hesitancy he showed had little to do with aviation. “As to the presence of ladies [at the Western Society of Engineers meeting], it is not my province to dictate, moreover I will already be as badly scared as it is possible for man to be, so that the presence of ladies will make little difference to me, provided I am not expected to appear in full dress, &c.”2
Chanute for his part provided details of other experiments as well as translations of articles and scientific work by French and German experimenters. On January 10, 1902, Wilbur wrote, “You will understand that your generosity and kindness is appreciated more than I can well express. We thank you most heartily.” Although Wilbur declined to appear at St. Louis, that he even considered going public with his work at that point is certainly a testament to his loyalty and to his belief that Chanute was offering productive counsel.
But after the 1902 tests, when Wilbur and Orville were certain success lay just ahead, cracks appeared. On March 23, 1903, the Wrights applied for a patent for a “flying machine,” using the 1902 glider as their model. The motor had yet to be built, but the brothers were interested in protecting the means of control, not the power source. Their application was quickly denied; the patent office was not about to grant a patent for a flying machine that had not flown. In his correspondence with Chanute, although Wilbur continued to discuss technical matters in great detail, he specifically avoided mentioning both the application and the rejection.
Chanute gave lectures in Europe, one in which he referred to the Wrights as “his pupils” and “devoted collaborators,” and wrote articles on the Wrights’ work, none of which met with the slightest objection from Wilbur. In fact, Wilbur expressed gratitude that Chanute had become their conduit to experimenters across the Atlantic. After his return, Chanute visited the brothers in Dayton and Wilbur agreed to once again address the Western Society of Engineers.
In a letter of July 24, 1903, however, after the motor had been built and the propeller problem solved, Wilbur became more assertive. In response to a query as to whether the rear rudder was operative, Wilbur replied, “The vertical tail is operated by wires leading to the wires which connect with the wing tips. Thus the movement of the wing tips operates the rudder. This stat
ement is not for publication, but merely to correct the misapprehension in your own mind. As the laws of France & Germany provide that patents will be held invalid if the matter claimed has been publicly printed we prefer to exercise reasonable caution about the details of our machine until the question of patents is settled. I only see three methods of dealing with this matter: (1) Tell the truth. (2) Tell nothing specific. (3) Tell something not true. I really cannot advise either the first or the third course.” That he was following the second course with Chanute himself he did not feel the need to point out.
Chanute’s response was a partial retreat. “I was puzzled by the way you put things in your former letters. You were sarcastic and I did not catch the idea that you feared that the description might forestall a patent. Now that I know it, I take pleasure in suppressing the passage altogether. I believe however that it would have proved quite harmless as the construction is ancient and well known.” Wilbur was having none of it. He reacted with uncharacteristic harshness, telling Chanute in early August he had “entirely mistaken” the objections to making the rudder arrangement public. “The trouble was not that it gave away our secrets, but that it attributed to us ancient methods we did not use.”3 Wilbur was particularly adamant that Chanute not mention “the warping of the wings” to anyone.
With Chanute put off, the Wrights attacked the final logistical problem: how to launch the craft. For gliding, the apparatus was dragged to the top of a hill or sand dune and then run down, allowing a combination of gravity and wind to provide the force to lift the glider off the ground. But with the motorized craft weighing in at more than 650 pounds, lugging it up a hill was out of the question. Also, if the Wrights were to gain a patent for having flown “unassisted,” launching downhill might invalidate their claim. So Wilbur and Orville settled on a track, eventually sixty feet long, on which the craft, guided by two bicycle wheel hubs, one fore and one aft, would travel until sufficient thrust had been attained to become airborne.
The Wrights arrived at Kitty Hawk in late September and walked into a series of frustrations. The propeller shaft cracked twice and with no means of repair in their desolate surroundings, new equipment had to be brought from Dayton; the motor failed its first tests, not producing sufficient revolutions per minute to get the craft off the ground; the sprockets on the chain connecting the motor to the propellers continued to come loose; the weather turned stormy, precluding any attempt at flight for weeks.
While they waited for their fortunes and the weather to turn, they received word that Langley and Manly were preparing to fly.
On October 7, 1903, with great ceremony, before a gaggle of reporters, scientists, army officers, and government luminaries—but not Langley, who was “detained” in Washington—Langley’s manned aerodrome was hoisted to a track laid along the length of the houseboat from which it would be slung by catapult down the Potomac. Charles Manly, who had fashioned a sophisticated, lightweight motor that would generate 50 horsepower, sat in the center, prepared to soar into history. Onlookers stood on the banks of the river, waiting to throw their hats into the air and break into wild cheering. Finally, the stays were removed and a counterweight flung the machine toward the river.
The aerodrome barely cleared the track before it proceeded to drop straight into the Potomac’s icy waters. So precipitous was its descent that Manly was lucky to free himself from the wreckage and bob to the surface in the cork vest he had worn to insulate him from the cold.
Langley was eviscerated in the press, front-page fodder across the nation. The New York Times headline read, “FLYING MACHINE FIASCO; Prof. Langley’s Airship Proves a Complete Failure. Prof. Manley [sic], in the Car of the Aerodrome, Escapes with a Ducking in the Potomac.”4 The St. Louis Republic agreed. “Flying Machine Built by Langley an Utter Failure.” The San Francisco Call added, “Langley’s Flying Machine Fails Completely.” The following day, the Times continued the assault on the editorial page. Under the headline “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly,” the editor wrote, “The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected, unless possibly by the distinguished Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution who devised it, and his assistants.”5
Undeterred, at least publicly, Langley insisted the principle was sound and that a flaw in the launching mechanism was to blame. He released a statement that said, “The machinery was working perfectly and giving every reason to anticipate a successful flight when this accident, due wholly to the launching ways, drew the aerodrome downward at the moment of release and cast it into the water near the houseboat.”6 Manly stated categorically that he had felt a catch in the mechanism at the point of release, which must have been responsible for the aerodrome hitting the water like, as one reporter described it, “a sack of mortar.”
The Langley aerodrome just after takeoff, October 7, 1903. It is already heading into the water.
The team set to work once more, this time with the perfectionist Langley determined that no flaw in any mechanism would cause him embarrassment. They went over every inch of the aerodrome, the launching track, and the catapult, checking, adjusting, and polishing. Langley also announced he would only launch if the wind was ideal, which meant five miles per hour or less. What the team did not do was reexamine the assumptions under which the aerodrome had been constructed.
On December 6, Langley tried again. Newspapers across the nation once again reported on the attempt and once again the result was a disaster. “A complete wreck,” as The New York Times observed.
“On the signal to start, the aeroplane glided smoothly along the launching tramway until the end of the slide was reached. Then, left to itself, the aeroplane broke in two and turned completely over, precipitating Prof. Charles Manly, who was operating it, into icy water beneath the tangled mass.” Once again Manly was threatened with drowning, and another of Langley’s assistants leapt in the water to help drag him to the surface. Langley, who had chosen to be present this time, “was crestfallen when he saw the fruit of months of study, labor, and a great expenditure of money disappear beneath the water, close to where he was standing aboard a tug.”7
Langley again tried to pass off the failure as a technical defect in the launching mechanism, easily correctable, but this time there were dissenting views. Army engineers who finally studied the design realized that the aerodrome was fatally flawed, lacking both sufficient power and sufficient lift. Going from a model to a full-size aircraft involved computing weight-to-thrust ratios that aerodynamicists had yet to formalize; with no background in mathematics and scant in engineering, Langley had ignored computations of scale and had never realized that it requires eight times the lift to keep a craft double the weight in the air. While the secretary insisted he would conduct another test within days, the army decided they had spent $50,000 on a boondoggle. Joseph Taylor Robinson, a congressman from Arkansas, was quoted as observing, “The only thing [Langley] ever made fly was government money.”8 Langley abandoned aviation and died a defeated man only three years later, never able to discern why he had been so stunningly unsuccessful.
While the press and the public came away from the aerodrome’s spectacular failures with renewed doubts about powered flight, the Wrights were nearing the moment that Langley had so desperately craved.
The only good news the Wrights had in October was Langley’s debacle. “I see that Langley has had his fling and failed,” Wilbur wrote to Chanute on October 16. “It seems to be our turn to throw now, and I wonder what our luck will be.”
Whether the motor, at 12 horsepower, would be strong enough to lift the machine off the ground was very much at issue. Chanute, who visited for a week in November at Wilbur’s urging, said that according to his calculations the Wrights’ propulsion system would lose so much power as it transferred through the elements that what remained might not generate sufficient thrust. Chanute was not being an alarmist; Wilbur had come to the same conclusion. After Chanute left, Wilbur a
nd Orville fine-tuned the motor and the drivetrain as best they could until they felt confident that the machine could achieve the needed thrust. Before they could run a test, however, the propeller shaft suffered its second crack, sending Orville back to Dayton.
Virtually at the moment Orville finished repairing the shaft, Samuel Langley’s aerodrome suffered its second ignominious plunge into the Potomac. Three days later, December 11, Orville arrived at Kitty Hawk.
On December 14, 1903, the Wrights made their first attempt. Wilbur had done all the initial tests previously but for this historic event the brothers flipped a coin. Wilbur won. He and Orville grasped their hands together but said nothing. Wilbur then took his prone position on the lower wing, slipped into the hip cradle, pushed the lever to engage the magneto that would start the motor, and waited as Orville stood at the end of one of the wings, steadying the craft for its run down the track.
The machine picked up speed too quickly for Orville to keep up—they had chosen a slight downhill for the attempt—and once free of the track, it nosed up, stalled, then came down, less than fifty feet away. An elevator support was damaged in the crash but there was little other damage and, most important, Wilbur was unhurt.
Despite the failure of the first attempt, the brothers both knew the problems were minor. Three days later, they tried again. Orville was up, so just after ten thirty in the morning, he took his place on the lower wing. An icy wind was blowing from the north—optimal to generate lift but less so for lying in a machine moving into the teeth of it. Orville had set up a camera at the near end of the track and asked John Daniels, one of the local men who’d helped them for three years, to snap a picture at the moment of launch.
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