Wright Brothers, Wrong Story

by William Hazelgrove

  In October my brother and myself spent a vacation of several weeks at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, experimenting with a soaring machine. We located on the bar which separates Albemarle Sound from the ocean. South of Kitty Hawk the bar is absolutely bare of vegetation and flat as a floor, from sound to ocean, for a distance of nearly five miles, except a sand hill one hundred and five feet high…. It is an ideal place for gliding experiments except of its inaccessibility. The person who goes there must take everything he will possibly need, for he cannot depend on getting any needed article from the outside world in less than three weeks.1

  What is the significance of this correspondence between the seventy-year-old engineer and the thirty-two-year-old bicycle mechanic? It is the school of one. As Tom Crouch summarizes in The Bishop's Boys, “From the time of Wilbur's first note of May 13, 1900, to Chanute's last on May 14, 1910, a total of 435 letters would pass between them. The sheer bulk of the exchange was extraordinary, averaging one letter every eight or nine days over an entire decade.”2 And these letters were not between Chanute and the Wright brothers. These letters were between Wilbur Wright and Octave Chanute. The Papers of the Wright Brothers include many of them, and they are striking in their length, their breadth, and the density of the discussion. It was a seminar of early aeronautics, and the pupil in the beginning was Wilbur; and then it became a seminar of two equals trying to find the answer to a riddle in a dark coal mine. In all the Wright–Chanute correspondence, there is but one letter between Octave Chanute and Orville Wright, and it centers on travel logistics. The rest are all between Wilbur and Octave. Historians have treated this by saying that Wilbur was a better writer than the profoundly shy Orville. This is ridiculous since Orville was the primary letter writer from Kitty Hawk on all matters to his sister, Katherine. The truth is, Wilbur had his hand on the pulse of his quest to fly, and he is the one who had the questions, the data, and the theories that would fly back and forth between the two men. Wilbur possessed the hot light of invention that demanded some kindred spirit to talk with, compare, inquire, and at times empathize with on the head-numbing audacity that would push a man with no degrees, no credentials, and no real successes to think he could be the one to solve what others could not.

  And so, Wilbur sat down and wrote his letter on November 16, 1900: “We began experiments by testing the machine as a kite and found that a wind of twenty-five miles would more than support it with an operator on it.” Wilbur then described his glider and gave the results of their gliding tests. He explained the logic behind the operator lying down: “We had intended to have the operator turn his body to an upright position before landing but a few preliminary tests having shown that it was feasible to let the machine settle down upon its lower surface with the operator maintaining his recumbent position, we used this method of landing entirely.”3

  Everything was new. No one knew how a man should even sit in a flying machine. Should someone sit up as if in a parlor or a car, or should someone lie down and decrease the drag upon the body? What was safer and more efficient? Wilbur was convinced that the correct way to fly was to lie down: “And although in appearance it was a dangerous practice we found it perfectly safe and comfortable except for flying in sand.”4 Who else but Chanute could he tell this to and get approval or disapproval? Wilbur needed a sounding board with someone who could show him the way and then set him free to find the answers. He described for the old scientist his method of experimentation:

  Our plan of operation was for the aeronaut to lie down on the lower plane while two assistants grabbed the ends of the machine and ran forward till the machine was supported on the air. The fore and aft equilibrium was in entire control of the rider, but the assistants ran beside the machine and pressed down the end which attempted to rise…. The speed rapidly increased until the runners could no longer keep up.5

  The aeronaut was Wilbur, of course, with Orville and William Tate running alongside. Chanute wrote back immediately: “I thank you much for your letter of 16th which I have found deeply interesting and I congratulate you heartily upon your success in diminishing the resistance of the framing and demonstrating that the horizontal position for the operator is not as unsafe as I believed.”6 Then Chanute asked for permission to include the results of the Kitty Hawk trip in an article in Cassier's Magazine. This was quite a validation for Wilbur, yet we see in his reply his quest for secrecy and to some degree paranoia. This was the self-knowledge that he possessed, the ability to discover the secrets of flight: “We will gladly give you your own information or anything you may wish to know, but for the present would not wish any publication in detail of the methods of operation or construction of the machine.”7

  Octave Chanute then proposed a visit to Dayton and included the article he intended to publish for Wilbur's approval. “I have lately been asked to prepare an article for Cassiers Magazine and I should like your permission to allude to your experiments in such brief and guarded way as you may indicate.”8 There followed two letters about load and lift coefficients. Wilbur sent him several photos of flying the glider as a kite to use in the article, and Chanute promised an anemometer (to measure wind speed) for Wilbur to use in his next trip to Kitty Hawk.

  Wilbur then wrote him about a return to Kitty Hawk with a new glider: “Our plans call for a trip of about six or eight weeks in September and October at the same locality we visited last year on the North Carolina Coast. We will erect a frame building 16 ft by 25 ft to house the machine in. The glider itself will be built on exactly the same general plan as our last years [sic] machine but will be larger and of improved construction in its detail.”9 Wilbur then invited Chanute to Kitty Hawk: “It is scarcely necessary to say that it would give us the greatest pleasure to have you visit us while in camp if you should find it possible to do so.”10

  For an intensely private man like Wilbur, this showed the amount of respect he had for Chanute and his desire to keep their relationship strong and the information flowing back and forth. Wilbur Wright needed Octave Chanute, and some could argue that Octave Chanute needed Wilbur, but this would come later in the relationship. Wilbur then did something very singular. He published two articles of his own in June 1901, the first under the title “Angle of Incidence.”11 He wrote the article and sent it to the editor of the Aeronautical Journal, who quickly published it. Wilbur wrote, “If the term ‘angle of incidence,’ so frequently used in aeronautical discussions, could be confined to a single definite meaning, viz the angle at which the airplane and wind actually meet, much error and confusion would be averted.”12 It is a highly technical article on aeronautics by a newcomer to the game but who is instantly taken seriously. This was Wilbur Wright's first notice to the world of his experiments at Kitty Hawk.

  The second article, “The Horizontal Position During Gliding Flight,” was published in a German magazine.13 He included a photograph of the 1900 glider being flown as a kite.

  All who are concerned with aerial navigation agree that the safety of the operator is more important to successful experimentation than any other point. The history of past investigations demonstrates that greater prudence is needed rather than greater skill. Only a madman would propose taking greater risks than the great constructors of earlier times…. The principal advantages of the upright position are obviously in starting and landing. Once in the air, many disadvantages become evident…. The experiments which my brother and I conducted were carried out at the seashore where sand hills rise on the sloping plain.14

  The article wades into the debate on pilot position, with Wilbur arguing against the Lilienthal model again and advocating for the recumbent position as the best position of control. The point is Orville did not write these first two articles on what happened in Kitty Hawk. Wilbur wrote the articles and announced to the world that he was doing flying experiments. He does mention his brother, but the fact is Wilbur published these articles that put forth his thesis on flying. There can only be one author even though the plural “we”
is now being used; the thrust of a letter to Octave Chanute is that of an inventor relaying his discoveries:

  Our final estimate of its soaring speed was twenty-two miles. We soon found that our arrangements for working the front rudder and twisting the planes were such that it was very difficult to operate them simultaneously…two minutes [sic] trial was sufficient to prove the efficiency of twisting the planes to achieve lateral balance…. Our rudder had an area of twelve square feet, and it was our sole means of guiding and balancing longitudinally. We never found it necessary to shift the body.15

  One thing to note here: Wilbur was announcing that his discovery of wing warping as a means of controlling the airplane was a success. It would be the first time wing warping is mentioned, and Chanute lost no time in responding and suggesting a meeting: “I shall hope to meet you either here or in Dayton to obtain further details and to compare calculations of lift and resistances. If your machine is not irretrievable I would much like to see it.”16

  Clearly Octave Chanute saw something in Wilbur Wright, who had just gone down and flown a glider kite at Kitty Hawk. He saw a kindred spirit and an intellectual equal. Chanute then wrote that he was coming to Dayton that summer; Chanute, the renowned engineer, was not coming to visit Orville Wright. He was coming to see the man with whom he had been corresponding about the best way to crack the Gordian knot of flight. He was coming to see Wilbur Wright.

  During the same time that Octave Chanute was preparing to meet with Wilbur Wright, the assassin Leon Czolgosz had been living on his parents’ farm and had been converted to the new radical movement, anarchism. He might have had a nervous breakdown, but he emerged determined to go see charismatic speaker and writer Emma Goldman and learn more about being an anarchist. Then he left to go kill the president. President William McKinley was walking the grounds of the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. A young man was walking toward him, and McKinley raised his arm to shake the man's hand. Czolgosz's concealed revolver fired twice, with one bullet grazing the president and the second burrowing into his abdomen.1 McKinley would be dead three days later from gangrene, and, at the age of forty-two, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt would become the youngest president in history. He matched the mood of the young nation: cocky and assured, a cowboy looking for the next great moment that was sure to come in the new century.

  Change was in the air.

  Secretary Samuel Charles Pierpont Langley had emerged as the king of flight, at least in his mind. His steam-powered model had flown, and the coffers of the Smithsonian Institute had been opened to him. He would produce the most expensive plane so far in man's attempt to fly. He was convinced that now it was all just propulsion. His model had flown well enough and circled the boat and landed on the water just fine. Control had been conquered. Just build a bigger model and put a man inside of it. The problem was that steam was out as an engine. He needed something more powerful.

  “All sorts of contrivances have been proposed,” Octave Chanute wrote in the Journal of Western Engineers as far back as 1897, “reaction jets of steam or compressed air, the explosion of gunpowder or even nitro glycerin, feathering paddle wheels of varied design, oscillating fins acting like the tails of fish, wings like the pinions of birds, and the rotating screw.”2 Langley had settled on the screw, and he determined that a gasoline engine would be powerful enough to drive it and put his craft in the air. He soon had Charles Manley building the most powerful engine in the world.

  Meanwhile, Glenn Curtiss was working on that very problem. Glenn liked to draw in the dirt. That was how he worked out problems a lot of the time. His brow would come down, his bushy eyebrows would move forward, and his mouth would be slightly pursed, like some old character out of a William Faulkner novel. The lanky mechanic of the homespun variety would then work out the bugs of his latest engine. His company couldn't build the engines fast enough for his motorcycles, and now he had just discovered that there was another customer base that needed his lightweight, powerful engines—dirigible pilots.

  Take Captain Thomas S. Baldwin, who was the perfect example of how one thing leads to another. Glenn would tell this story many times because it helped show that if you did a good job, then one thing did lead to something else. Baldwin was at his California ranch, trying to get his dirigible off the ground, but the engine kept quitting. The cowhands were having a field day. The lawnmower engine was underpowered and, worse, it would sputter out every time he tried to lift off. And then came the mythical part. Just as he was about to give up, a dust cloud appeared on the road and was coming closer and closer. It turned into a tornado, with a bug-eyed man in front, gunning down the road on a Curtiss motorcycle. “It's Harry White,” a bystander drawled, “on his newfangled motorcycle he just got from the East.”3

  Like a character out of an old Saturday Evening Post story, Harry swung off, and Captain Baldwin had a close look at the puttering engine. Then Harry produced a dog-eared catalog for G. H. Curtiss Manufacturing Company in Hammondsport, New York. Baldwin thumbed through the catalog of Curtiss motorcycles and engines and hollered out, “Boys, dump the gas out of the bag and chuck that old junk pile of a motor…. I've found the motor we need.”4

  The telegram that came into Glenn Curtiss's office wanted a two-cycled motorcycle engine shipped as soon as possible. Curtiss never had enough engines, so he ripped one out of a motorcycle and sent it off to Captain Baldwin. The motor reached Baldwin, and he promptly “installed the engine toward the rear of the spruce keel which was suspended, like a catwalk by cords from a net surrounding the bag of his newest hopeful dirigible.”5 As Cecil Roseberry describes the airship in Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight, “The rather shapeless non-rigid bag 52 feet long by 17 feet in diameter when inflated with hydrogen, was made of varnished Japanese silk. By means of a long shaft of steel tubing, the engine drove an 8-foot propeller mounted at the front to drag the craft through the air.” The pilot sat with a vertical rudder and guided the airship not unlike a boat. “The California Arrow was the first successful dirigible to fly in the United States.”6 And it had a Glenn Curtiss engine.

  It would seem natural that Glenn would follow his engines. Captain Baldwin went to Hammondsport after winning the grand prize at the St. Louis World's Fair for flying the longest and returning to the same starting point. Baldwin thought the Curtiss factory to be small and unassuming, as was the man. Glenn Curtiss was very young and dressed more like a mechanic than the owner of a motorcycle factory: “[Baldwin] found himself face to face with a disarmingly young man, reticent almost to the point of shyness, informal, working alongside his employees in shop clothes.”7

  Baldwin was jovial and corpulent, with a loud voice and a backslapping manner. The captain was later quoted in the local paper as saying, “Navigation of the air is as practicable as navigation of the water…. The Curtiss motor is absolutely perfect.”8 He ordered two more motors and entered into a long-term contract for a line of California Arrows. Baldwin couldn't help but notice the pencil drawings of engines that Curtiss had sketched out on the walls. They were almost like fine etchings, but Glenn wouldn't bother with paper when showing an innovation to the workmen. Curtiss had found his niche in the construction of engines, but he didn't take the conquest of air too seriously. “I get twice as much money for my motors from those aviation cranks,” he would later boast.9 However, Curtiss would later find two aviation cranks who would change his life. Baldwin had found the man to power his airships and had pointed Glenn Curtiss on a collision course with the Wright brothers.

  Langley didn't know of Curtiss at this point and had found Charles Manley, his senior engineering student, at Cornell University. He was just what Langley was looking for in an assistant, a “young man who is morally trustworthy with some gumption and professional training.”10 Manley would oversee the design of the new flying machine and eventually fly it. He would spend two years developing the power plant that would generate 50 horsepower to drive the aerodrome. Money was no object, and everyone
expected Langley to be the man who would crack the code of being able to ascend to the heavens. People would have laughed at the suggestion that a bicycle mechanic was already further along than the great scientist who headed the Smithsonian Institute, Secretary Langley. Money, government support, and the best minds of science were required to tackle flight. Not some man in a tent in the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. That was laughable.

  But Octave Chanute would not have laughed as he knocked on the door of the house on Hawthorne Street. Wilbur had taken a walk and when he returned, the professorial Chanute was in his parlor. On his stroll around the neighborhood, Wilbur might have passed Oliver Crook Haugh's old home. Maybe he pushed his tongue against the bridge in his mouth and thought of that day of ice-skating that changed the course of his life. In five years, an electric chair would end Haugh's life.

  Sprouting a white goatee and a cane, Chanute lit up the Wright home with his wit, insight, and, much more than all that, his knowledge of the science of aeronautics. Katherine Wright had let in the distinguished man with the snow-white hair, and Milton must have met the dapper, world-famous engineer with mixed emotions. “O. Chanute spent the evening with our boys…. Mr. O. Chanute spent most of the forenoon and till after 2:00 with us. He is an authority on aerial navigation.”11 These short entries in his diary could have been the same if another boy from the neighborhood had dropped in.

  Milton was the star of the household, the fount of knowledge and morality, if not God, and here was this secular man who really was a player on the world stage. Milton liked to think his travels and his importance required and deserved the support of his grown children. But here was a man from the outside, an important man who took the lark to Kitty Hawk to fly a crazy contraption to another level. Could his son Wilbur really be onto something? This man seemed to think so.