This brings us back to the night at the fair in 1906, when the Wright brothers assisted in retrieving Baldwin's escaped hot-air balloon and finally met Glenn Curtiss. The very secret that Wilbur had so meticulously guarded was now going to be exposed. There was little chance a man like Glenn Curtiss could have stumbled on Wilbur's system of aeronautical control if he hadn't gone to the Dayton Fair. Curtiss felt that the Wrights had proved amenable and much friendlier than he had previously thought. Prior to meeting with them, the word Curtiss got was that the Wright brothers didn't do business with people they didn't know. But now they had offered to have him drop by their shop.
Curtiss was impressed with the simplicity of the Dayton workshop. It was efficient, organized, and clean. Wilbur pulled out the photographs of their machine in flight at Kitty Hawk and at Hoffman Prairie. Curtiss was very proud of his lightweight, powerful motors, just as Wilbur was of his flyer. The conversation was far ranging, and Curtiss asked him question after question about control, rudders, wing warping, propulsion, and flying. Glenn believed knowledge was like the air and just as free. He asked so many questions that George Baldwin later chastised him for his obnoxious manners on the way back to the fairgrounds. Glenn Curtiss didn't care. He left the Wrights that night with his head full of ideas.
He followed up with a letter again.
Gentlemen—
This is my first opportunity to write you since getting back from Dayton…. It may interest you to know that we cut out some of the inner surface of the blades on the big propeller, so as to reduce the resistance and allow it to speed up and it showed a remarkable improvement.36
Curtiss then listed several other improvements, finishing up by saying, “we are getting well started on the 8-cylinder motor for Jones. It certainly looks good on the drawings. Will let you know how it pans out as to power.”37
This moment of cross-pollination would prove portentous for all parties involved. Over the next two years, Glenn Curtiss would build airplanes with ailerons that many would say were based on the wing-warping concept of the Wright brothers. Ailerons used hinges, Curtiss would later point out, and you cannot copyright an idea. He had walked back to the fairgrounds with dust on his shoes and his head exploding with ideas. Years later, some historians would say this was the night Glenn Curtiss stole Wilbur Wright's invention. As Roseberry wrote in Glenn Curtiss: A Pioneer of Flight, “The Wrights and their partisans repeatedly cited it as evidence that Curtiss attempted to pick their brains at their first meeting.”38
Under the aegis of the AEA, Curtiss fired one more shot across the bow and approached Wilbur directly in 1907:
Dear Mr. Wright—
Although I have been endeavoring to keep track of your movements by the newspapers, I am not sure which of the Brothers is in Dayton. Therefore, address you as above. I just wish to keep in touch and let you know that we have made considerable progress in engine construction. [Curtiss then describes his latest engine.] The 50 H.P. engine will weigh about 200 pounds and the 100 about 350 pounds. We would be glad to furnish you with one of these gratis, providing you are in the market for engines, as we have great confidence in them. This proposition you will appreciate is not at all regular and is made to you confidentially…. I should like very much to have you come to Hammondsport at any time you will feel it convenient, not only that we may talk engines, but we would feel honored to make you our guests as long as you care to stay.39
Wilbur smelled a rat and turned Curtiss down on both counts. He wrote back, “Your very interesting letter of December 30th has been received. We thank you for your offer to us of your powerful motors for use on our flyer. We believe, however, that our own motor of 25 to 30 will meet all the requirements…. We remember your visit to Dayton with pleasure. The experience we had together in helping Captain Baldwin back to the fairgrounds was not one soon to be forgotten.”40
Like a bride wary of an aggressive suitor, Wilbur instinctively knew there was a condition in Curtiss's offer: Tell me all that you know. It was Glenn Curtiss's last attempt to do business with the Wrights. From then on, he would take what he could.
Alexander Graham Bell looked around, then walked quickly into the shed and saw the smashed up Wright flyer. He pulled out a tape measure and began taking measurements. The rain pattered on the shed roof. He noted the wing span, the curvature of the wing itself, and the mountings of the smashed motor. He examined the controls of the flyer, the wing, the movable rudder, and the warping edges of the wings that were controlled by cables. He walked around in his suit and kneeled down and saw blood on the white, muslin canvas. He didn't know if it was Orville Wright's or Captain Selfridge's. He stood up, and then walked quickly away, passing a soldier outside the door. Aviation just had its first fatality.
It began with the army committing to buying a Wright plane. All the Wrights had to do was fly the plane with an army officer, and the contract would be signed. Wilbur was in France demonstrating to the world that they had built a plane that could actually fly, so it was up to Orville to do the test. It was damp, and the sky was low at Fort Meyer, Virginia. The smell of the earth rose under the plane as Orville walked around inspecting the wings, the wheels, the rudder, the engine, and the propeller. The press was there with a good-sized crowd. Some people asked for Orville's autograph.
He turned back to the plane. The propeller was wooden and built in layers. Wilbur always inspected the propellers very closely. All seemed to be in working order, but Orville was not very familiar with the new controls of the 1908 plane; he sat in the seat going over possible scenarios, moving the rudder and the ailerons, and checking the cables.
He stood and watched Captain Selfridge crossing the wet field. A light fog was dissipating. Orville felt a disgust well up over him. “I understand that he does a good deal of knocking behind my back,” he wrote Wilbur.1 Selfridge was part of the Aviation Experiment Association that included Glenn Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell. Curtiss had already infringed on their patent and sold a plane using their wing-warping technology. “I learn from Scientific American that your June Bug has surfaces at the tips of the wings, adjustable to different angles on the right and left sides for maintaining lateral balance,” Wilbur wrote him in a formal letter.2 “Claim 14 or four patent No. 821,393 specifically covers the combination which we are informed you are using.”
After retaining a lawyer and resubmitting their patent, Wilbur had struck pay dirt. The patent had been granted on May 22, 1906, for “new and useful improvements in Flying Machines.”3 For three years since Kill Devil Hills, Wilbur and Orville had essentially refrained from flying in public, under the fear that someone would steal their secret, and it had paid off with a far-reaching patent. Now anyone who wanted to fly had three choices. As Mark Eppler summed it up in The Wright Way: “Sign a license agreement, pay royalties, or stay grounded. For all intents and purposes, Wilbur and Orville Wright now controlled the skies.”4
And now Orville was supposed to take Capt. Tom Selfridge flying with him because the army required one of their own to make a flight before the Wrights could get a contract. It was like taking a spin with Benedict Arnold or a spy. “I will be glad to have Selfridge out of the way,” he wrote to Wilbur after arriving in Fort Meyer. “I don't trust him an inch. He is intensely interested in the subject and plans to meet me at dinners where he can pump me.”5
Bell and Selfridge were associated with Curtiss, and that was enough for the Wrights to detest the men.6 Wilbur had flatly told Glenn Curtiss that he must pay to use the technology discovered at Kitty Hawk: “We believe it will be very difficult to develop a successful machine without the use of some of the features covered in our patent [granted in 1906].”7
There it was. In their view, and the court's, anyone building an airplane owed the Wrights royalties, and Curtiss built the June Bug, which clearly used their technology. The Wrights had a stranglehold on the budding aeronautical industry and would stifle progress to the point that when World War I broke out, the Unite
d States would be behind other countries in producing advanced biplanes. Curtiss obfuscated in his reply and said that the AEA was merely experimenting, and any conflict of patents should be handled by the secretary of the organization—none other than the man with whom Orville had to fly, Tom Selfridge. Curtiss was basically stalling the Wrights while he moved ahead to design his next plane. Selfridge had even sent a letter inquiring about the patent, but Wilbur saw subterfuge. “Selfridge,” he had written to Orville, “is infringing our patent on wing twisting.”8 Best to get this flight over with quickly.
Selfridge nodded to Orville, took off his uninform jacket and hat, and handed them to a friend. He sat down next Orville, who nodded to the men to push the propellers. The engine coughed to life, and the plane vibrated like a caged animal. Just after 5 p.m., the counterweight for the catapult was dropped, hurling the Wright flyer into the air. The plane lifted quickly, and Orville struggled with the unfamiliar controls, then made three circles around the parade ground. Selfridge seemed to be enjoying himself, and Orville started thinking about landing when he heard a slight tapping behind him.
They were moving toward the wall of Arlington Cemetery. Orville turned around and looked behind him but saw nothing wrong. Two thumps shook the plane, and the flyer turned violently to the left. Orville cut the power to the engine and fought with the controls. Then came a crack, and the plane nosed down.
W. S. Clime, a photographer on the ground, wrote later:
There was a crack like a pistol shot coming from above. I saw a piece of a propeller blade twirling off on to the Southward. For a brief period, [the plane] kept on its course, then swerved to the left and with a swoop backwards, but in an almost perpendicular manner it fell for half the distance to the ground. Then suddenly righting itself regained for an instant its normal position only to pitch forward and strike on the parallel planes in front for altering elevation.9
Orville would later write to Wilbur and explain the last seconds of the flight:
The machine suddenly turned to the right and I immediately shut off the power. I then discovered that the machine would not respond to the steering and lateral balancing levers which produced a most peculiar feeling of helplessness. Yet I continued to push the levers, when the machine suddenly turned to the left till it faced directly up the field. I reversed the levers to stop the turning and to bring the wings on a level. Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the ground…. Lieutenant Selfridge up to this time had not uttered a word, though he took a hasty glance behind when the propeller broke…but when the machine turned headfirst to the ground he exclaimed Oh Oh in an almost inaudible voice.10
The plane smashed into the ground nose first and buried Selfridge and Orville in the wings, wires, earth, and engine. Selfridge was under the engine and choking on his blood. A deep gash in his forehead pulsed blood. Orville was unconscious and bleeding from the head as well. The crowd rushed to the wreck, and the two men were put on stretchers. Orville had a concussion, a broken femur, four cracked ribs, and a dislocated hip. Selfridge had two skull fractures and internal injuries. He died on the operating table at 9 p.m. The wreckage was put in a shed, and it was found that one of the propellers had cracked lengthwise, which knocked the other propeller out of balance and cut a stay wire. The Wright flyer then went out of control.
The army interpreted it as a freak accident. Alexander Graham Bell of the AEA intimated that it was Orville's lack of experience with the new controls that contributed to the crash and that if it had one propeller instead of two, the crash wouldn't have happened. In Orville's mind, what caused him to lose control was the fact that he had to fly with a man whom he considered a spy and a thief. In Wilbur's mind, it was his brother's carelessness that caused the crash that killed Selfridge. He wrote to Milton and called the crash “a great pity,” then went on to say, “I think the trouble was caused by the feverish conditions under which Orville had to work. His time was consumed by people who wished to congratulate him and encourage him.”11
He then wrote this to his sister, Katherine:
I cannot help but thinking repeatedly, if I had been there, it would not have happened…. It was not right to leave Orville there to undertake the task alone. I do not mean that Orville was incompetent to the work itself, but I realized that he would be surrounded by thousands of people…. A man cannot take sufficient care when he is subject to continual interruptions and his time is consumed by talking to visitors. I cannot help suspecting that Orville told Charlie to put on the big screws instead of doing it himself and that if he had done it himself he would have noticed the thing that made the trouble, whatever it may have been…. People think I am foolish because I do not like the men to do the least important work on the machine…. Hired men pay no attention to anything but the particular thing they are told to do.12
It was not the first time he had accused Orville of carelessness. When the Flyer had been shipped to France earlier in the year, Wilbur found it damaged beyond belief: “I…have been puzzled to know how you could have wasted two full days packing,” he wrote Orville caustically.13 “I am sure that with a scoop shovel I could have put things in within two or three minutes and made fully as good a job of it. I never saw [such] evidence of idiocy in my life.” Wilbur kept up his attack on his brother's competency for days until Katherine stepped in: “Orv looks perfectly terrible…so pale and tired. I wouldn't fuss at him all the time. You have troubles too but I can't see any sense in so much complaining at him.”14
In a letter to Chanute, Wilbur came to terms with the root cause of the crash: “One blade of the right propeller developed a longitudinal crack which permitted that blade to flatten out and lose its pushing power…. This brought the uninjured blade in contact with the upper stay wire to the tail and tore it loose, the end of the wire wrapping around the end of the blade and breaking it off.”15
Selfridge's funeral was not attended by any of the Wrights, nor did Glenn Curtiss attend. Alexander Graham Bell of the AEA was named as a pallbearer. After the funeral, Bell and others walked by the shed containing the mangled flyer. Bell hesitated, looked around, then walked into the shed and took some measurements. The sergeant guarding the wreckage confirmed the measurement by Bell later. When Orville and Wilbur learned this, they accused Bell, the AEA, and by connection Curtiss, of using the funeral as a cover to steal more of their secrets. Orville was still in the hospital, flat on his back, and Wilbur was certain that even in death Selfridge had managed to conspire to infringe even further on their patents. Glenn Curtiss was singularly loathed by Wilbur for being behind Orville's distracted flight, the taking of measurements of their flyer, and the infringement on their patent. A case could be made by the Wrights that Curtiss was a factor in Selfridge's death. It wouldn't be the last time a death would be blamed on the upstart aviator, Glenn Curtiss.
The boys ran over the sand dune. They had walked the four miles from Kitty Hawk to see where the flying fellas had flown their airplane. Someone said that there were airplanes in the old shacks at the foot of the dunes. The wind was blowing, and it was still cold for April. The roof was gone and one wall had collapsed in. They had passed a wing sticking out of the sand, and they figured the plane was somewhere inside. Maybe they could go for a ride.
They had just reached the building when they saw a man walking briskly toward them and they ran off. The man did not look like anyone from the island. He wore a suit with a white shirt and a derby. He had on shiny leather shoes. He had just appeared like a god from another planet. He walked with a purpose, his eyes straight ahead, barely noticing the boys tearing across the dunes. He was already cataloging the damage.
The sand had invaded and claimed the floor and had come crashing through one wall. In a few more years, it would bury the shed and the building where he had lived and broken the code of flight. Wilbur Wright stared at the remnants of Octave Chanute's glider that had crashed from the rafters to the floor. The roof was open, and one wall was
down. Even now the sand was blowing into the building. The new building they had built for the 1903 Flyer was simply gone. A nor'easter had carried it off, William Tate had told him upon his arrival.
Wilbur turned slowly. Here is where he had found the secret. Here is where he had been allowed to take to the air. Here he had been supremely happy in his pursuit of a singular dream to fly like the winged creatures of the earth. He had done it, and yet he had lost something that had been there in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This remote outpost, this shelf on the edge of the continent, had given him the moment “to lie motionless between a pair of seventeen-foot wings on a sea-scented updraft,” and now he wanted it back.1
Wilbur turned, stared out the window, and heard the wind whistling through the boards. Sand. Yes, the sands of time would cover it all. He turned and stared out to the dunes, where he saw a skeleton poking out of the sand. He walked outside and struggled over to the small dune. It was the wing of the 1902 flyer. They had flown it one last time and just left it there, and time had buried it until this one bit of wing was the only marker of all that effort. Wilbur touched the rotted fabric, the pine struts that he had cut and bent. This was one of his babies. Of course he would never have children and lately he couldn't escape the feeling that his time was limited. His health had not been good, with the stress of the patent wars and the impending suits with Glenn Curtiss.
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