Birdmen
Page 18
But ironically, Morgan could not remain on the board. The other investors feared the titan of 32 Wall Street would overshadow the rest of them, as might Gary for that matter—quite a sentiment coming from men such as Vanderbilt and Belmont. Difficulties were averted when the two agreed to step aside. Morgan’s uncharacteristic gesture of diplomacy was not popular with everyone. When Wilbur sent the details of the new roster to his brother, Orville cabled back, “I prefer J. P. Morgan.”
But Morgan remained out and it was soon agreed that Wilbur would be president of the new Wright Company and Orville a vice president, along with financier Andrew Freedman. Clinton Peterkin would also be rewarded with a vice presidency.*12 The offices of the new company would be in New York but the factory would remain in Dayton.
The financial arrangements were immensely favorable to Wilbur and Orville. The Wright Company would be capitalized at $1 million, quite a step up from the Algers’ offer. The Wrights would receive $100,000 in cash, one-third of the stock, and the same 10 percent royalty on sales. (In return, the Wrights agreed to hire the Algers’ nephew Frank Russell to run the factory.)
With everyone agreed on particulars, the legal niceties were concluded with dispatch and on November 22, 1909, the Wright Company was incorporated in Albany under the laws of the state of New York. The New York Times headline read, “Big Men of Finance Back the Wrights.”
One of the primary goals of the new company was to permanently neuter competition. The Algers had been urging Wilbur and Orville to hire a prominent patent attorney for months, but they had stuck with Toulmin. Now, although Toulmin would continue to play a role, higher-powered legal talent would be brought to bear. DeLancey Nicoll, the company’s Wall Street lawyer, asserted, “There is not a machine that pilots the air that doesn’t infringe the Wright patents.” Peterkin told the newspapers that it was “the purpose of the Wrights and the Board of Directors to maintain and defend the Wright patents against all comers … and that one of the main purposes in forming the corporation with such a strong Board of Directors was to assist the Wrights in every way to maintain their patent rights.”
The long-term corporate vision was as ethereal as the wealth of its investors. “The members of the company are confident that in three years, at least, the aeroplane will be as popular as the automobile,” Andrew Freedman observed. To that end, the corporation would open a training facility in Florida, and research would be undertaken to develop passenger service—the Wrights believed a twenty-passenger airplane was already feasible—as well as mail and freight service. Another specific stipulation of the corporate agreement was that Orville and especially Wilbur be left free of any burdensome administrative details so that they could spend their time on research and innovation.
Even worse for Curtiss, at the very moment the Wrights solidified their business, the Herring–Curtiss partnership was descending into chaos. At an October 23 emergency board of directors meeting, Herring was instructed to produce all patents and inventions. The matter could no longer be put off; Herring–Curtiss was being sued and those patents were its best and perhaps only defense. But Herring, of course, could not comply, there being no patents or inventions to produce.*13 Perhaps of equal importance, the company had almost no money. The only income was what Curtiss earned in prize money and from the sale of motors. Herring–Curtiss had sold only one airplane and the purchaser was being sued by the Wrights, which made further sales in the immediate future problematic.
Curtiss waited two months while Herring stalled, prevaricated, and worked behind the scenes to either take control of the company himself or quietly dispose of his stock. Finally, another board meeting was called on December 18, for which Herring showed up with a lawyer. The board voted to seek an injunction compelling him to turn over his patents and inventions. After the vote, Herring asked to leave the room for a few moments to consider his response. A bit later, his lawyer left as well to confer with his client. Neither returned. After a time, Jerome Fanciulli was dispatched to find the two men but both had vanished. Herring, in fact, hid in the woods while his lawyer snuck off to telephone for an automobile. The two then cajoled lodgings for the night and in the morning made their way to the railroad station and eventually New York before their partners could catch up to them.
Curtiss got his injunction the following day but had no one on whom to serve it. Herring had gone into hiding. When he emerged, it was with legal action of his own. Herring accused Curtiss of stealing his inventions, of losing Herring’s money through mismanagement, and of manipulating the board of directors at Herring’s expense. Herring, it seemed, was not about to go quietly—if he would go at all.
The Wrights merely watched with amusement and satisfaction. The contrast between the elite, qualified partners they had taken and the shady, self-promoting proto–confidence man with whom Curtiss had thrown in could not have been more acute. With such a juggernaut at their backs and with Herring–Curtiss on the verge of self-immolation, Wilbur and Orville had every reason to believe that the monopoly they had been seeking for more than five years could now simply be plucked from the trees.
* * *
*1 After Blériot’s feat, Orville would write to Wilbur that “the Daily Mail is against us.”
*2 The prize had been initiated by André Michelin earlier in 1908, to be awarded each year until 1915 to the aviator who flew the farthest on a predetermined course. Michelin intended to award a “grand prize” at the end of the eight-year competition, but after 1914 French aviators were no longer flying for sport.
*3 Bennett was the expatriate publisher of The New York Herald and a longtime air enthusiast who put up a $5,000 prize to go with the trophy.
*4 “Rheims” was the accepted spelling in 1909.
*5 Quentin Roosevelt, his father’s favorite, would die in air combat in World War I, shot down over France on Bastille Day, 1918. He was twenty years old.
*6 Curtiss was presented with a gold medal at the luncheon, at which 150 were in attendance, including Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless. The Gordon Bennett trophy, which Curtiss had also received, was topped with a facsimile of a Wright Flyer.
*7 Until 1898, New York City consisted of Manhattan and the West Bronx. On January 1, 1899, the east Bronx, Richmond, Queens, and Kings County (the city of Brooklyn) were merged to form Greater New York City.
*8 The commission balked at paying the $3,500 Curtiss asked to defray expenses. Only the threat of a lawsuit got them to fork over $2,500. But Wilbur was never fully paid, either; he received only $12,500 of the promised $15,000.
*9 Hill was hardly a Curtiss sycophant. In 1914, he initiated a patent infringement suit against Curtiss far more questionable than that of the Wrights. After Curtiss had succeeded in designing an aircraft that could take off and land on water, Hill represented one Albert S. Janin of Staten Island, described in the New York World as a “poor cabinet maker” or “an obscure and almost penniless carpenter” who had filed a patent application on the very day Curtiss had first taken off from the water. Janin’s concept, for which he had been trying to raise money for years but which was never built nor tested, was to attach small side floats to either side of the aircraft to maintain stability while it rested on the surface of the water. Hill succeeded in obtaining an initial judgment for Janin, who quit his five-dollar-a-day job the day it was handed down, but the ruling was ultimately overturned by an appeals court that characterized Janin’s creation as “a mere description.”
*10 Why Wilbur and Orville felt that they needed cash is a mystery. Orville had recently sent Lorin, who was keeping the books, a draft for $40,000 from the German affiliate.
*11 Peterkin might have been young but he was hardly inexperienced. Before approaching Wilbur he had helped finance mines in Mexico, ranches in the Dakotas, and orange groves in Florida. He had been following the Wrights since 1905, a time when most American businessmen didn’t know they existed. Eventually, he would earn the nickname “the Harriman of the Air” an
d enjoy a long and successful business career until his death in Los Angeles in 1944. He was a man of varied interests; in 1906 he wrote a letter to The New York Times in which he extolled fresh air and a good diet as a cure for respiratory ailments.
*12 Peterkin’s stay with the Wright Company would be brief. On November 29, 1909, Andrew Freedman wrote to Wilbur and Orville, “By reason of the actions of Mr. Peterkin since your departure, I have come to the same conclusion that you had already formed, and I do not desire to be associated with him here in connection with management of the company.” The nature of the “actions” was never made clear other than that Peterkin had been “indiscreet” with reporters, probably meaning he aggrandized his role in getting the company off the ground. In a subsequent letter to Wilbur and Orville, Freedman noted that Peterkin was very junior at the Morgan Bank and that Vanderbilt agreed that the company would be better without him.
*13 Herring, in his later lawsuit against Curtiss, denied that any specific request had ever been made.
Best-Laid Plans
The stir over fixed-wing aircraft had not diminished the enthusiasm for dirigibles, particularly for the vast majority of Americans who had never seen either in the air. Baldwin, Knabenshue, and Beachey, therefore, did quite well touring the country and either competing for distance or speed or putting on exhibitions, sometimes soaring in tandem. Balloonists would open the St. Louis centennial, although three days had been set aside for Curtiss to fly. Other features of the event included the “appearance of mysterious veiled prophets,” and a number of talks by Frederick Cook, an Arctic explorer who at the time was considered to have been the first man ever to reach the North Pole.*1
Curtiss shone in St. Louis, flying to the accolades of thousands, but that seemed scant consolation after being humiliated by Wilbur Wright in New York. Curtiss and Knabenshue began to discuss mounting a major international air meet, similar to those in which Curtiss had achieved acclaim in Europe. Jerome Fanciulli thought it an excellent suggestion. The Wrights had demonstrated distaste for such affairs and Curtiss could therefore have the headlines more or less to himself.
Knabenshue, as it turned out, had previously talked of the idea with Charles Willard, a twenty-five-year-old Harvard-trained engineer who had taught himself to fly on the Golden Flier, the very airplane that Curtiss had sold to the Aeronautical Society and prompted the Wrights’ suit against them. Baldwin and Beachey were keen for an air meet as well. Sentiment seemed to favor the West, where no heavier-than-air craft had yet flown. Knabenshue had been told that Los Angeles city officials were as anxious to find a way to celebrate the growth of their city in size and sophistication as the aviators and aeronauts were to find a venue for their meet. They had already discussed bidding for the 1910 Gordon Bennett trophy race, which would be held in the United States since the 1909 winner, Curtiss, had been an American.
Knabenshue was designated as the group’s representative; he went to California and contacted a flamboyant Los Angeles promoter named Dick Ferris. Ferris was something of a Barnum of the West. He had produced everything from opera to automobile processions to “all Indian theater”; he put on plays with horses racing across the stage; in early October, he had promoted a “nightinee,” a night baseball game between the Los Angeles Angels and San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. He also happened to be president of the local balloon club. *2
Ferris was off and running. He recruited his friend Max Ihmsen, publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner, and in early November after one rejection—city fathers were under the impression that Ferris wanted them to put up the money—the City Council endorsed the meet, to be held January 10–18. (It would ultimately run until the twentieth.) A strict stipulation was that no city funds would be required.
Dick Ferris didn’t need politicians; he knew how to raise money. Within two days, he wired $10,000 to Curtiss and the meet had its first star. Ferris solicited the Wrights as well but was ignored. Wilbur and Orville, flush with their new corporate articles, had no intention of sullying their hands in the exhibition business. What was more, they intended that no one else did, either, as Ferris was soon to find out.
For international appeal, Ferris swung high. He cabled Blériot, Latham, Count de Lambert, and Louis Paulhan. Paulhan combined superb flying skills with European panache and had been one of the most popular flyers at Reims. He had set an altitude record that Latham had bested and Los Angeles seemed to Ferris the perfect place for Paulhan to try to return the favor.
Ferris was in the headlines virtually every day, touting the meet’s importance to the city. “I am in receipt of frequent telephone calls and written messages approving the idea as a great boost for Los Angeles, and in fact all California. It shows people the way to keep up with aeronautical progress nowadays and that we are not behind the rest of the world in this regard.”1 To help stoke the fires, he announced—prematurely as it turned out—that Latham and Lambert had “as good as accepted.” Neither came. But Paulhan did agree—as long as he was paid $25,000. On December 1, Henry Huntington, president of the California Aviation Society, cabled $25,000 to Edmund Cleary, Paulhan’s manager.
The Los Angeles Merchants and Manufacturers Association promised to raise $100,000 for operating expenses and prize money. As a local newspaper noted, “If this is done, it will make the rest of the world stare at Los Angeles, for other cities have been struggling for months to raise an equal amount for an international aviation meet next summer.”2
All that was left to find was a suitable setting for the spectacle. Organizers eventually chose Dominguez Hill, a mesa approximately thirteen miles south of central Los Angeles that was part of Rancho San Pedro, a 43,000-acre land grant. Daughters of Manuel Dominguez, the original owner, made the property available without a fee. In addition to its ideal topography, the mesa, renamed Aviation Field, was only a half mile from a Southern Pacific railroad terminal and near a Pacific Electric trolley line as well.
Dick Ferris supervised the construction of a grandstand that would hold 25,000. A 2½-mile course was laid out, marked by towers, and an “aviation camp” of large tents was set up to house the airplanes and dirigibles. The meet would be replete with a sideshow featuring carnival barkers and Siamese twins, ample concessions, and a medical station installed to patch up the wounded—of which everyone expected there to be many. Then, of course, there was the $80,000 that had been set aside for prize money.
As December drew to a close, it seemed to all concerned that Ferris had brokered a huge success. Tickets were sold up and down the west coast and attendance for the ten-day event promised to approach a quarter million. That Ferris was forced to admit that only Paulhan and two assistant pilots would arrive from across the Atlantic dampened spirits not at all.
Curtiss, it seemed, had hired Jerome Fanciulli at just the right time—there would be a Curtiss Exhibition Team after all, although at first it was an ad hoc affair consisting solely of one aviator of questionable sanity who operated without any supervision whatever.
Curtiss’s flyer was Charles Hamilton. Hamilton, who demonstrated a remarkable ability to survive crashes, be they in gliders, dirigibles, or fixed-wing aircraft—he would have sixty-three—thrust himself on Curtiss in October 1909 and simply pestered him into submission. When Curtiss finally acquiesced and agreed to teach Hamilton to fly, he discovered that he had stumbled on a natural, a man capable of wowing audiences and keeping Curtiss airplanes in the headlines. Curtiss signed Hamilton to an exhibition contract—which included a provision absolving Curtiss of all liability for Hamilton’s mishaps—then turned Hamilton loose on a breathless and eager public.
Within weeks, Hamilton in the Rheims Racer had flown in a gale and in a blinding snowstorm, won a race with an electric automobile, sped across the sky at record-breaking 62.72 wind-aided miles per hour, crashed twice, barely missed telegraph wires on another occasion, and once had to dive from the airplane as it careened across the ice, landing face-first on a frozen lake.3 The c
rowds, which began in the hundreds and grew to thousands, loved him.
When Charles Willard decided to bring his Golden Flier to Los Angeles, the Curtiss “team” had its third member.
All Dick Ferris and his investors needed to do was wait for the deluge of spectators to arrive. Even the weather promised to cooperate, as it generally does in California. Unfortunately, the Wrights did not.
On January 3, 1910, one week before the air meet was to begin, federal district court judge John R. Hazel granted the Wright Company’s request for an injunction enjoining the Herring–Curtiss corporation and Glenn Curtiss and Augustus Herring personally from manufacturing, selling, or flying airplanes for profit. Hazel, with no training in aerodynamics, nonetheless went into great detail in an opinion that accepted every assertion of the Wrights and none of Curtiss and concluded that it was “not improbable they may succeed at final hearing, and therefore a preliminary injunction be granted.” Harry Toulmin wrote to Wilbur and Orville, “You have much to be thankful for … his opinion follows our brief in reasoning and conclusions; much of it adopts our language.”4 Although the writ was aimed only at one competitor, as the Wright Company had announced that every airplane currently in use infringed on their patent, similar orders were soon to follow.
For Curtiss, and every other airplane manufacturer, Hazel’s decision was a potential death knell. Patent infringement cases, fraught with technical specifications that puzzle even experts, often stretch out for years. During that period, the defendant is generally free to continue to compete with the plaintiff, understanding that crippling retroactive damages will be assessed if he loses. Here, however, Hazel was preempting the decision, effectively putting Curtiss out of business in advance, denying him the opportunity to sell his airplanes and thereby perpetuate the income stream necessary to defend himself in court. As one law professor noted, “Maintaining patent rights through litigation can be so expensive that unless it is funded by rapidly expanding production of the invention, the patent holder [or defendant] can be bankrupted by litigation costs alone.”5