During the negotiations with Freedman, Aero Club officials floated the idea of a major international air meet—to be sanctioned—at Belmont Park in Jamaica, New York, near the current site of John F. Kennedy International Airport. Freedman was enthusiastic as the fees would be hefty, a windfall for the Wright Company. He agreed to help with the financing and asked Wilbur to help with organization, logistics, and the invitations to British and French aviators. “We need your assistance here,” Freedman wrote Wilbur, “to lay out this plan very big and imposing, at the same time to have no reckless waste.… I do not question, if the weather is good in our week, but that we will have from 200,000 to 300,000 people at our Meet.” Wilbur grudgingly agreed, although his only specific response was an emphatic insistence that no foreign aviator receive more than $2,500 in appearance fees.
Attracting flyers was not a certainty, since the Wright lawyers were active across the Atlantic as well, ensuring that resentment would be spread across the entire aviation community. Infringement suits were filed against both manufacturers and aviators in France and Germany, including Farman and Blériot. While some of those named had certainly expropriated the Wrights’ wing-warping system, many, as did Curtiss, employed ailerons and independent lateral and rudder control. In France in particular, the accusations of cheating against a national hero like Blériot further turned the Wrights into pariahs.
Although Wilbur and Orville rarely saw the need to court popular approval—or any approval—Wright Company investors understood that to effectively secure the preeminent place in the market they sought, some effort to mollify the howls of a growing population of critics was required. Otherwise public opinion just might bleed into legal opinion. In May 1910 a remarkable exchange took place in the pages of Aircraft magazine. Aircraft, whose maiden issue had appeared only three months earlier, had published an article by George F. Campbell Wood, secretary of the Aero Club, titled “The Wright-Curtiss-Paulhan Conflict.” In it Wood hinted that the Wrights’ three-axis provision of its patent was not as applicable to other aircraft as the brothers claimed. In the April issue, another article, over Louis Paulhan’s signature, insisted that his rudder operated independently of the ailerons, which of course Curtiss had asserted as well. Although neither judge who had ruled on the case had discussed this separation of two axes of control, that the Wrights’ patent would apply to machines that did so seemed increasingly questionable. That the Wrights themselves had disengaged the rudder from the wing-warping control only bolstered the argument.
The May exchange in Aircraft was in two consecutive articles, each by a lawyer. The first was by the Wrights’ patent attorney, Harry Toulmin. Given this unique forum to explain why Wilbur and Orville actually did invent a system from which others appropriated fundamental principles without which their own devices would not fly, to justify the breadth of the Wright patent to an increasingly antagonistic peer group, to explain the science, Toulmin chose appeals to, of all things, patriotism and sympathy.
In an article titled “Attacks on Wright Brothers Wholly Unjustified,” after acknowledging that “those interested in aeronautics have drifted into two camps—one pro-Wright and the other anti-Wright,” Toulmin expressed surprise that such a division could exist “among the countrymen of the Wright brothers, or among those having a sincere interest in the progress of aviation.” Toulmin’s surprise was not directed to “the few who are in haste to commercialize aeronautics and make money as showmen”—omitting for the moment that his clients were now engaged in both of those pursuits—but rather to the “genuine opposition to the attitude of the Wrights, or to the judgments of the courts,” which he deemed “incredible.”
The crux of Toulmin’s argument was that the term of the patent, seventeen years, was not a particularly long time. “Who can say, with justice or honesty of purpose, that the Wright brothers or their assignees should not have the exclusive use and control of this marvelous invention for this brief period, after which it passes to the public by operation of law?” Toulmin went on to note that the Wrights had made “expenditures almost to the exhaustion of their resources,” and then evoked the United States Constitution to again plead for exclusivity during “this brief period.” Those opposed to the court’s decision, Toulmin insisted, “were expending no money, were giving no time and, indeed, no thought to production” while “the Wrights were working with loss, in obscurity, and without moral or financial aid or encouragement.” Toulmin then asked, “Do these opponents, be they few or many, realize that, when all is said and done, the real essence of their attack is not against the Wrights merely, that it is an attack on property and is opposition to the statutes and to the provisions of the Constitution?” All this justifies the Wrights being paid “some share of [aviation’s] very handsome proceeds.”
Seventeen years, of course—thirteen of which remained when this astonishing article appeared—was a lifetime in a formative industry such as aviation, where initial demand for a groundbreaking product can be at its most intense. And while the Wrights certainly devoted personal resources to the quest for flight, at no time were they near the end of their financial rope. And of course, the royalties they were asking were not merely “some share of very handsome proceeds”; they were sufficiently high as to be almost confiscatory. To assert that others were not risking both their fortunes and their lives in similar pursuit was both ludicrous and insulting to a readership who knew that neither was remotely true. That the Wrights had received both encouragement and support from Octave Chanute, among others, was hardly a secret, and of course, they had not worked so much in obscurity as in secret. Finally, questioning the patriotism of any who would oppose the Wright monopoly was unlikely to persuade doubters. But most conspicuous in Toulmin’s article was the absence of any explanation of why the Wrights deserved their sweeping patent; that, pioneer patents or no, the granting of exclusivity hadn’t been simply an error by a judge who knew nothing of aeronautics. There was no mention of the three-axis question.
In the article immediately following, the response to Toulmin was ferocious and scathing. The author was Louis Paulhan’s attorney, Israel Ludlow. Unlike Toulmin, who had no experience in aeronautics before the Wrights, Ludlow’s credentials were unquestioned. He was a charter member of the Aero Club of America and beginning in 1905 had built several large gliders flown by the very same Charles Hamilton who now flew for Curtiss. But Ludlow’s talents lay in the law, not engineering. None of his designs sustained flight, and on April 14, 1906, he went aloft himself and fell two hundred feet when his glider’s canvas and bamboo frame cracked in a strong wind. Ludlow broke his spine in the fall. He was pinned for a time under the wreckage and at first not expected to live. He survived but lost the use of his legs and spent the last fifty-four years of his life in a wheelchair. Despite his infirmity, Ludlow remained active in aviation and was a fixture at air shows and Aero Club functions. And as a mutilé de guerre, he was the object of respect and affection.
Ludlow characterized the Wright patent as “a power of injunction, a possible monopoly, which, owned by a covetous and rich corporation, might threaten the very life of aviation, stifle development in this country and bar out the fruits of foreign progress.” He added acidly, “Is not the attitude of the Wright Corporation that ‘there is not enough profit in aerial navigation for all, but just enough for the Wrights’?” Ludlow then took issue with Wilbur and Orville’s claim to be sole inventors of the aeroplane, calling the device “the result of the inventive genius of the mechanical age.” Ludlow contended that the approximately $700,000 spent by Curtiss, Farman, and Blériot in developing aircraft while the Wright invention remained secret was “prima facie proof that these aeroplanes are not slavish copies, but are the result of independent development.”
While not as outrageous as Toulmin’s contentions, Ludlow took liberties with the truth as well. Implying the Wrights had merely extended the work of others was, as with Chanute, simply untrue. His further assertion that the Wright
s had invalidated their patents by attempting to sell them to foreign governments was equally spurious, as was another accusation, that the drawings in the Wright patent applications had been intentionally falsified and, if copied by a designer, would be “suicidal.”
But in his reiteration that the “Wright patent fundamentally is a combination claim between the rear vertical rudder and the side control,” he was on firmer ground. “If one element of the combination is missing there can be no infringement under the present interpretation of the Courts,” was also a correct statement as far as it went. The courts, of course, were free to interpret the scope of the Wright patent any way they chose.
Finally Ludlow attacked the severity of the Wrights’ proposed remedy and by inference its chilling effect on technological progress. “The Wright Company’s modest demand in the Curtiss and Paulhan suits was that their opponents’ machines be delivered over to them that they may destroy them and that all profits and three-fold damages in addition be paid to it.” He added, “The Wright Company is attempting to impose an exorbitant tax … and is claiming a monopoly for selling, making, working, using, or exhibiting aeroplanes, under the pretense that such monopoly is the reward due the Wright brothers for making public … a practical aeroplane.”
May ended as badly as it began for Wilbur and Orville. On the twenty-ninth of that month, Glenn Curtiss completed the first true cross-country flight in the United States and he did it with the full participation of the nation’s largest newspaper, The New York Times.
* * *
*1 Where Hazel’s judicial qualifications might have been hazy, there were no such questions with Hand. He is generally regarded as one of the preeminent legal theoreticians ever to sit on the American bench and would enjoy a highly distinguished thirty-five-year tenure as a circuit court justice in New York.
*2 Gates was born in Illinois in 1855. He made a fortune selling barbed wire in the dying days of the open range, parlayed that into a bigger fortune in land speculation, then in 1902 struck oil in Texas and founded the company that would become Texaco. Gates’s penchant for wagering enormous sums on horses prompted an English newspaper to refer to him as “Bet-a-Million” Gates, a sobriquet he despised. He had been an early investor in United States Steel and came to know Elbert Gary, who let him in on the Wright Company incorporation.
Team Sports
As part of the Hudson–Fulton exhibition, the New York World, the same newspaper that published Octave Chanute’s interview critical of the Wrights, offered $10,000 to the first aviator who replicated Fulton’s journey from Governors Island to Albany, or flew the reverse route from Albany to New York. The flight, 150 miles, was considered too far for a heavier-than-air machine. It was, in fact, longer than the distance Henri Farman would fly to win that year’s Michelin cup. Only a dirigible, it was believed, could complete such a journey, and during the Hudson–Fulton two airships, one piloted by Thomas Baldwin, did try for the enormous prize. Each was done in by a combination of atmospheric conditions and mechanical failures.*1
When the Hudson–Fulton was done and the prize unclaimed, the World extended the offer for a year and Curtiss became interested. In addition to the glory, with both the Herring fiasco and the infringement suit far from settled, he was constantly in need of money. By early spring of 1910, aviation had advanced sufficiently that an airplane was more likely to complete the journey than a dirigible. Not wanting potential competitors to know his intentions, Curtiss undertook his preparations in secrecy.
But one of those competitors would not be Wilbur Wright. While $10,000 would seem irresistible to most flyers, once again Wilbur Wright chose to eschew ostentation and focus on sales—still refusing to understand that the two were interrelated.
Because of the distance, terrain, shifting winds, and treacherous air currents, the trip would require intricate planning. Curtiss’s first decision was to begin from Albany rather than Governors Island because “there were convenient spots where one might land before getting well under way, should it become necessary,” while “there are very few places for an aeroplane to land with safety around New York City.”1
Next, a special airplane would be designed for a trip spent either over or in proximity to water. While not exactly creating a hydroplane, Curtiss, as had Wilbur, made provision for an emergency landing in the river. He filled a canvas-covered box with corks and attached it to the underside of the airplane, mounted an angled plane on the front to deflect water, and placed pontoons under the lower wing. The craft would also carry a large fuel tank and therefore require a V-8 engine powerful enough to handle the extra weight. In spring 1910, Curtiss had built his airplane, which would be christened the Hudson Flyer.
The flight plan also required great care. Realizing that he might be forced down short of his final destination, “I wanted to know of another place on the upper edge of the city where I might come down if it should prove necessary. I looked all over the upper end of Manhattan Island and at last found a little meadow on a side hill just at the junction of the Hudson and Harlem rivers, at a place called Inwood. It was small and sloping, but had the advantage of being within the limits of New York City. It proved fortunate for me that I had selected this place, for it later served to a mighty good advantage.”2
Toward the end of May, as the Hudson Flyer was being assembled on Rensselaer Island, Curtiss journeyed by steamboat from Albany to New York and peppered the captain with questions about topography and weather. Among the obstacles he encountered was a bridge at Poughkeepsie. “I began to deliberate whether it would be better to pass over or beneath it in the aeroplane.” Curtiss also chose Poughkeepsie as a place to land the Flyer to refuel and check the machine out. Although the director of the State Hospital for the Insane offered his lawn, Curtiss chose an open field called Camelot on the east side of the river.
On Sunday, May 29, 1910, at 7:03 A.M., Glenn Curtiss took off from Rensselaer Island. The New York Times was determined to outdo its rival, the World, and so chartered a special train to make the run parallel with and sometimes under the Hudson Flyer. Passengers included a slew of Times reporters and photographers and Lena Curtiss. They relayed updates to hotels and clubs by telegraph, so thousands were kept abreast of Curtiss’s progress and were able to run to the roofs of their buildings to see the Hudson Flyer pass. Hundreds of thousands of others stood along a river dotted with sail and power boats of every size and description, all awaiting a glimpse of the intrepid aviator making his historic flight.
In ninety minutes, Curtiss reached Camelot. When he landed, he discovered to his annoyance that replacement fuel had not been delivered. Had he chosen West Point for his refueling stop, fuel would have been plentiful, but this was farmland. Fortunately, any number of automobiles had driven to the spot and their owners were thrilled to donate eight gallons of gasoline and a gallon and a half of oil to the cause. During the stopover, the Times train pulled off on a siding and Lena Curtiss had time to give a hug and kiss to her husband before he ascended for the run to Governors Island.
But the last stretch would also be the most dangerous. Just north of West Point, the river narrows and runs through the cliffs of Hudson Highlands, a narrow pass dominated by Storm King Mountain on the west bank, before widening out ten miles to the south. The topography creates a wind tunnel effect through the pass and fierce downdrafts in the air above.
Curtiss ascended to two thousand feet to safely clear the mountain but was unprepared for the maelstrom. He hit the air currents and the airplane almost instantly dropped fifty feet, lurching to the side at the same moment. Curtiss was lifted from his seat like a bull rider in a rodeo and only his grip on the controls kept him from being thrown from the airplane.
He was asked later by reporters if he had been scared. The newspaper account fit well with Curtiss’s public image. As the Times reported, “ ‘Well, I can’t say that I was scared, but it upset me a little,’ said Curtiss with a smile. ‘It was the worst plunge I ever got in an aeroplane, a
nd I don’t want to get another one like it soon. After that I went lower, because the variations in the air currents were not so great near the ground or the water.’ ”3 Privately, he was less self-possessed. “My heart was in my mouth,” he said. “I thought it was all over.”4
Just north of Manhattan, Curtiss noticed his oil gauge showed near empty. His scouting trip to Inwood turned out to be fortuitous because he headed for an estate built on a rise just off the Hudson whose lawn sloped gently toward the river. He landed there with ease, was welcomed by the occupants, once again replenished fluid by accepting donations from the automobilists, took off, and landed soon afterward on the very spot that had been the scene of his greatest humiliation not ten months before. A representative worked his way through the crowd to present Curtiss with a check for $10,000.
Curtiss’s flight down the Hudson was the most publicized feat of aviation in history, outstripping even Blériot’s jaunt across the Channel. The New York Times devoted no less than twelve separate articles to the flight on May 30. The main headline read, “CURTISS FLIES, ALBANY TO NEW YORK, AT THE SPEED OF 54 MILES AN HOUR; Travels Faster Than Twentieth Century Limited, but Times Special Train Keeps Pace.” Other articles contained Lena Curtiss’s expressions of confidence in her husband, Curtiss’s own commentary, an interview with the pastor who emptied his church to watch, and even the impressions of a West Point cadet who was inspired to take up flying himself. The spread contained numerous photographs, including a spectacular shot taken from the train of Curtiss soaring over Storm King Mountain. The Times had never devoted this much space to a news story, even during the Civil War. As a result, the account was splashed on front pages across America and Glenn Curtiss was once again lauded as the most accomplished aviator in the United States.
Birdmen Page 21