The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

by Crouch, Tom D.

  Voisin began testing the new craft in April 1905. Archdeacon, “who knew how to open the most difficult doors,” obtained War Department permission to use Issy-les-Moulineaux, an abandoned military parade ground north of Paris, as a flying field. The first test was scheduled for March 25. Voisin was eager to go up, but Archdeacon insisted that an unmanned test be conducted first with sand ballast in lieu of a pilot. It was a wise decision. The craft rose to an altitude of thirty feet and broke apart in the air. “Without this preliminary trial,” Voisin remarked, “Issy would only have seen me on this one occasion.” He spent the next two months rebuilding the craft with a set of floats. For safety’s sake Archdeacon decided to conduct all future tests over water.14

  A small crowd of spectators lined the banks of the Seine between the Billancourt and Sèvres bridges on the afternoon of June 8 to watch Voisin fly the new glider. By three o’clock the machine had been towed into midstream and attached to the speedboat La Rapière. Voisin, secure in his saddle, ordered the boat into motion. “I had the controls ready,” he recalled fifty years later. “I waited for a time and then I applied elevator.” The glider rose from the water, reaching an altitude of perhaps sixty feet. The boat slowed as it approached the bridge, allowing the craft to settle gently back onto the surface after a flight of some 2,000 feet.15

  Early the following morning one of those who had witnessed the spectacle called on Voisin. Louis Blériot was in the market for a flying machine. A thirty-three-year-old manufacturer of automobile headlamps, Blériot was a striking man, sturdily built, with a dark face and heavy features. His sweeping mustache, clear, deepset eyes, and high cheekbones led more than one observer to remark on his resemblance to an ancient Gallic chieftain. Frédérick Collin, his mechanic, thought that Blériot’s prominent nose, giving him a birdlike profile, might be evidence of predestination.

  Blériot had caught the flying-machine bug while still a student, but kept his enthusiasm in check “for fear of being taken for a fool.” Having seen Voisin in the air, he could no longer resist the urge to fly. Voisin accepted Blériot’s money and built a glider to his new client’s order, in spite of the fact that he regarded the design as dangerously unstable.16

  Voisin tested both the rebuilt Archdeacon machine and the new Blériot glider on July 19. On the first trial an inexperienced towboat operator took off down the river “like a mad thing,” damaging the Archdeacon craft. Lifting off the surface aboard the Blériot craft a few minutes later, Voisin immediately realized that the glider was just as unstable as he had feared. It rocked violently from side to side a few times, then dropped off on one wing and entered the water less than 100 feet from the spot where it had taken off. The machine was destroyed and Voisin barely escaped with his life. Far from discouraged, Blériot and Voisin, who was anxious to leave the ranks of hired mechanics, entered the flying-machine business as full partners three days after the trials.

  While Esnault-Pelterie, Voisin, and Blériot were just beginning their work, Ferdinand Ferber was approaching the end of his. That spring he made the world’s first glider flight with a passenger, his mechanic. While the newspapers made much of this, it was scarcely calculated to advance aeronautical technology.

  The machine was his now standard type de Wright glider, this one featuring triangular wingtip “rudders” and a fixed horizontal stabilizer resembling the spread feathers of a bird’s tail. Ferber altered the glider in May 1905, adding a 6-hp Peugeot engine and a small propeller mounted on the forward elevator support. The craft was totally incapable of sustained flight. After three years of effort, Ferber was farther from the Wrights, and success, than when he started.

  The year 1906 was as promising for the French as it was disappointing for the Wrights. The list of enthusiasts continued to grow. Rumanian-born Trajan Vuia unveiled a tractor monoplane powered by a 23-hp Serpollet carbonic-acid gas engine at Montesson, near Paris, on March 3. You had to look closely to see the Wright influence, but it was there. Unlike his colleagues, Vuia used both wing warping and the canard elevator.

  He made three short hops on March 3, August 12, and August 19, rebuilt the craft, then made eight more hops from Issy and Bagatelle with his new I-bis configuration between October 6, 1906, and March 30, 1907. The best of these covered only ten meters. The Vuia II, which followed in 1907, was little more successful than its predecessor.

  The Danish experimenter J. C. R. Ellehammer coaxed his monoplane through a 42-meter tethered flight over the circular track at Lindholm on September 12, 1906. Ellehammer and Vuia did not achieve sustained flight, but they did popularize the monoplane configuration, inspiring others, notably Blériot and Levavaseur, who were just entering the field.

  The monoplanes were interesting, but it was Alberto Santos-Dumont who dominated the headlines of 1906 with his biplane 14-bis (Project No. 14, second version).

  The aircraft rolled out the doors of Santos’s workshop-hangar at Neuilly-Saint-James in July 1906. It was one of the most awkward-looking machines ever to take to the sky. In fact, 14-bis (most newsmen preferred to call it the Bird of Prey) was nothing more than another free interpretation of the basic Wright configuration—a pusher biplane with a canard elevator. The influence of Hargrave’s box kite was apparent as well.

  Initially, there was no lateral control, although the wing dihedral provided a measure of automatic stability. At some point in the early fall of 1906, Santos mounted two simple ailerons in the center of the outer wing bays. A forward canard cell mounted on a universal joint doubled as elevator and rudder. The pilot stood in a wicker basket cockpit set at the rear of the machine, operating the rudder and elevator with two small control wheels; the ailerons were controlled by a body harness.

  Late in June, Santos announced that he was entering the competition for both the Coupe d’Aviation Archdeacon and the Aéro-Club de France 100-meter prize. Initial tests of 14-bis were conducted with the machine running back and forth beneath an overhead wire strung between two poles. On July 14 he made an ascent with the craft slung beneath an airship.

  Serious flight trials began on the Bois de Boulogne in late August. After several unsuccessful attempts to leave the ground on the 21st and 22nd, Santos replaced the original 24-hp Antoinette power plant with a new 50-hp model.

  The machine flew under its own power on September 13, hopping 4–7 meters through the air. Santos lifted off a second time at four-forty-five on the afternoon of October 23, covering a distance of 50 meters at an altitude of 3–4 meters, to win the Coupe d’Aviation Ernest Archdeacon for the first public flight of over 25 meters. Everyone’s favorite Brazilian was back in the headlines. Ignoring the Wright claims to flights of over 25 miles the previous year, the members of the Aéro-Club hailed Santos as “The Triumphant One.”

  Early on the morning of November 12, Santos ordered his workmen to wheel 14-bis out of the stripped hangar pitched next to his workshop at Neuilly. The little procession moved a few hundred yards down the Rue de Longchamp, through the Bagatelle gate, and out onto an open corner of the Bois de Boulogne that served as a polo field and an exercise yard for horses. Hundreds of spectators gathered as the day wore on. Three times that morning and afternoon Santos attempted to take off. Each time he failed.

  He climbed into the wicker basket for the fourth time at about four o’clock. “The vast crowd formed into two long lines down the center of the field,” a New York Herald reporter noted. “There was a general hush as the motor began to turn, and then a shout of satisfaction as the Bird of Prey bounded off like a flash and was tearing through the air at nearly forty kilometers an hour.”17

  From Santos’s vantage point, everything seemed to happen at once. He could hear the roar of the crowd above the engine. Looking forward, he watched the excited mass draw together in front of him. He pulled back on the wheel, nosed up over the crowd, and set the machine down in an open spot beyond. Spectators swarmed over the craft, pulled him from the cockpit, and carried him off the field in triumph.

 
Santos had flown 222 meters (722 feet) in 211/5 seconds. It was only 100 feet and 38 seconds short of the Wrights’ best flight at Kitty Hawk. Santos would leave the ground in 14-bis just one more time for a short hop of 50 meters at Saint-Cyr on April 7, 1907.

  All of France erupted in a frenzy. The hero was fêted at banquets and lionized in the press. Archdeacon declared that Santos had “assuredly gained the greatest glory to which a man can aspire. He has achieved, not in secret or before hypothetical and cooperative witnesses, a superb flight … a decisive step in the history of aviation.” “It will be partly thanks to me,” Archdeacon concluded, “that my country will have been the first officially to have given birth to aviation, perhaps the greatest discovery made by Man since the beginning of the world.”18

  Across the Atlantic, Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America, announced that Santos’s flight of November 12 “marks the most positive advance yet made in the science of aeronautics.” American newspapers offered fulsome praise, referring to the event as “The First Important Demonstration … of an Aeroplane in Public” and predicting “the beginning of a new era.” Wire service stories spoke of “The Aerial Revolution,” and predicted “Changes in Government to Meet New Condition.”

  Santos dominated the headlines for the moment, but the Wrights were not forgotten. American journalists coupled their coverage of the events at Bagatelle with articles on the Wright story. Alexander Graham Bell’s “Tribute to the Wright Brothers” appeared in newspapers from coast to coast. “Santos borrowed their ideas,” he pointed out. “To them belongs the credit of solving the great problems of aeronautics.”19

  Bell’s comment drew a strong reaction from Santos. Questioned by the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, the Brazilian insisted that the inventor’s remark had been “dictated by jealousy.”20

  Professor Bell is reported to have said that he believes the Wright brothers have made a machine which has flown, and that naturally they kept it perfectly secret. Almost in the same breath he is reported as accusing me of copying the designs of the Wright brothers. How could I do such a thing if the machine had been kept hidden away from every observer? The thing is altogether too absurd!21

  “There is absolutely no evidence to support the alleged statements of the Wright brothers,” Santos told the newsmen. “They may have flown, but there is nothing in any report of their proceedings that inspires confidence.”

  chapter 24

  WEALTH AND FAME

  November 1906-November 1907

  Milton Wright was too preoccupied with his own problems to pay much attention to Wilbur and Orville’s aeronautical experiments during the crucial years 1900–05. He seldom worried about the risks—they had promised to be careful, and his sons would keep their word.

  By the fall of 1906, Will and Orv had temporarily put physical risk behind them. Yet Milton was concerned about the more subtle dangers his sons would encounter in the immediate future. He had no doubt that success would put their strength of character and sense of values to severe test. “There is much in the papers about the Wright brothers,” he noted in his diary on November 30. “They have fame, but not wealth, yet. Both these, though aspired after by so many, are vain.”1

  The stream of visitors passing through Milton’s house had already altered the comfortable pattern of family life. Weaver, Coquelle, Fordyce, Hammer, the members of the French commission, Pat Alexander, Baldwin, and Curtiss—all had come and gone in the past year. Will and Orv had not yet flown in public, but they were already minor international celebrities and objects of curiosity.

  Thanksgiving week, 1906, was a particularly busy time. It began on November 20 with a visit from an editor of Scientific American. Henry Weaver, whose testimony had thrown the French into such an uproar, arrived two days later with a visitor from Paris—Frank Lahm. They stayed for two days, locked in extended discussions with Will and Orv in the upstairs room at the bike shop.

  Their most important guest, Ulysses D. Eddy, arrived in Dayton on Thanksgiving Day, and called at 7 Hawthorn the following morning. Unlike the others, Eddy had little direct interest in aeronautics. He was a professional dealmaker who had learned his trade from a master, Charles Ranlett Flint.

  Little remembered today, Flint was well known to readers of turn-of-the-century newspapers as “the Rubber King” and “the Father of Trusts.” He had organized such giant combines as United States Rubber, the American Woolen Company, U.S. Bobbin and Shuttle, and American Chicle. The investment banking firm of Charles R. Flint & Company also profited from the sale of American arms and technology abroad—the company sold an entire fleet to Brazil, and purchased ships for Japan, Russia, and Chile. From time to time, Flint served as an overseas agent for American inventors. He had sold American electric automobiles in France and introduced Simon Lake’s submarine boat to the tradition-bound czarist navy.2

  Until recently, Ulysses Eddy had worked as a Flint agent. Not long after he struck out on his own, Eddy noticed a news article on the Wrights that appeared at the time of Santos Dumont’s flight. Intrigued, and recognizing a golden opportunity for his old friends at Flint & Company, he caught the next train for Dayton.

  Like everyone else, Eddy was impressed by the Wrights. The brothers planned to accompany Pat Alexander back to New York in early December to attend the second Aero Club of America exhibition, where their new four-cylinder upright engines would be on display. Eddy arranged for them to meet with Frank R. Cordley, a Flint executive, at that time.3

  Alexander arrived in Dayton late on the morning of December 5. He ate lunch and supper with the Wrights, and discussed the lack of response from the various foreign governments. The three of them boarded the overnight train for New York at ten o’clock that evening. They attended the exhibition the following day, and dined that evening at the Century Club as the guests of John Brisbane Walker, editor of Cosmopolitan.

  These days the Wrights’ comings and goings were reported in some detail by the New York Enquirer, the News, and the Herald. Scientific American, so critical at the time of the original exhibition, now coupled its coverage of the new show with an editorial on “The Genesis of the First Successful Aeroplane.” “In all the history of invention,” commented the editor, “there is probably no parallel to the unostentatious manner in which the Wright brothers, of Dayton, Ohio, ushered into the world their epoch-making invention of the first successful aeroplane flying machine.4

  The meeting with Flint & Company officials went very well. Cordley seconded Eddy’s judgment: if they could strike a deal, there was money in this for everyone. Charles Flint himself was out of town, however. Cordley reassured the Wrights, and asked them to return to New York for a final conference when Flint returned.5

  The brothers traveled from New York to Washington by way of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where they stopped for a pleasant evening with their old friend George Spratt. Arriving in Washington on the morning of December 10, they met with Bell, Zahm, and interested parties from the Weather Bureau and the Smithsonian. Milton picked them up at the Dayton station at nine o’clock on the morning of December 12.

  The telegram recalling them for the promised meeting with Charles Flint arrived five days later. Orville would make the trip alone—they did not want to appear anxious, and the absence of one brother would guarantee that no final arrangement could be made immediately.

  Orv did return with a tentative offer: Flint would pay $500,000 for all foreign rights, following a demonstration flight of fifty kilometers. The Wrights were to have the American market to themselves. They would also have the right to compete for any prizes, and, after a reasonable length of time, would be free to publish anything they wished.

  Will wrote to Chanute on December 20 asking his advice. Chanute replied that the deal “seems much better than I thought possible,” but asked if they had considered the moral implications of turning such a potential weapon over to a European nation.6

  A Flint agent, Mr. George Nolte, arrived
in Dayton on December 26. His task was to push the Wrights into an immediate agreement. They would have none of that, and returned to New York to resume face-to-face negotiations in late January 1907. The original proposition for an outright sale of all foreign rights was no longer acceptable to either side. Flint countered with an offer to serve as an agent for foreign sales, the brothers to keep all monies earned up to $50,000; beyond that, the proceeds would be split fifty-fifty. Flint also offered an additional $50,000 for a private demonstration flight to be staged for the czar.

  The Wrights rejected both proposals. They were not willing to give Flint & Company a free hand in the sale of their invention, nor would they fly for the czar, or anyone else, until they had signed a contract for the sale of an airplane.

  Flint then proposed another arrangement. The company would serve as agent for the sale of the Wright airplane in Europe, at a price and under conditions to be approved by the inventors. For their efforts, Flint & Company would receive 20 percent of all profits up to $500,000 and 40 percent thereafter. As before, the Wrights would have the American market entirely to themselves. This was very close to what the Wrights had in mind, but they still refused to act. On January 26 they left for Dayton, promising to send a proposal of their own that would embody major portions of the Flint suggestion.7

  Wilbur returned to New York on February 5 to discuss a special sale to Germany. The specifics were not to his liking, but he did give tentative approval to the final agreement for a split up to $500,000. Company executives forged ahead. Flint himself made contact with officials in Russia. Isidore Loewe, a Flint agent who also served as director of the Mauser Gun Works, was instructed to explore matters in Germany. Coded cables were sent to Lady Jane Taylor, a well-placed Scotswoman who would see to things in England. Hart 0. Berg, who was generally in charge of Flint European operations, would see what could be done in France.