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

by Crouch, Tom D.

  The Germans had waited a long time to see an airplane in flight. Crowds of up to 200,000 people, as large as any that had gathered at Reims, came to see Orv fly. At times the crush was frightening. On September 17, following a flight witnessed by members of the royal family, Orville joined Katharine and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Flint, who were touring Germany. After several minutes during which the crowd threatened to overwhelm them, Orville left his sister and guests in order to draw the well-wishers away.25

  The Kaiser and his family were taken with the Wrights. As part of the official response to the French spectacular at Reims, the Emperor had arranged for Count von Zeppelin to fly the great airship LZ 6 from Friedrichshafen to Berlin. The Kaiser insisted that Orville join him in greeting the count upon his arrival in Berlin on August 29, and hosted both heroes of the air at a dinner that evening. Two weeks later, on September 15, Orville flew from Frankfurt to Mannheim aboard the LZ 6.26

  Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm was an enthusiastic supporter of the Wrights. Orville took the young man up for a fifteen-minute flight on October 2. As a memento of the occasion, the first member of any royal family to fly removed a stickpin from his tie and presented it to Orville. The diamond-encrusted “W,” he explained, could as easily stand for Wright as for Wilhelm.27

  By the time Orville completed his duties in Germany, Wilbur was also back in the air, and in the news. While he was in New York filing the patent suits in August, representatives of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Aeronautics Committee had offered Wilbur a $15,000 contract for a flight of at least ten miles in length or one hour in duration plus any other flights he would be willing to make during the two weeks following September 25. The flights would be the highlight of a great celebration in honor of the centennial of the first voyage of Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat and the three hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s entry into New York Harbor. To add spice to the proceedings, the committee also offered Glenn Curtiss a $5,000 contract for a flight from Governors Island to Grant’s Tomb and back.28

  Wilbur accepted his offer and was back in New York on September 20 with a crated airplane and Charlie Taylor to assist in its assembly. A day later Glenn Curtiss stepped off the ship from France. On the morning of September 22 he visited Wilbur at Governors Island, where hangars had been provided for both of them. The meeting was outwardly pleasant. Wilbur plied the man against whom he had already filed an infringement suit with questions about Reims.29

  Curtiss traveled to Hammondsport for a welcoming ceremony, returning to New York with a new airplane on September 29. The Reims Racer was no longer available—Herring had accepted $5,000 from Rodman Wanamaker to exhibit the craft in his department store, provided that it could appear immediately after the return from France.30

  Curtiss, his one-week contract about to expire, made one short hop early the next morning. Convinced that the underpowered substitute airplane was unequal to the task of flying on a windy day, he rolled it back into the hangar and left.

  Wilbur saw a golden opportunity to show Curtiss up. He took off for the first time at nine o’clock that morning and flew a two-mile circuit of Governors Island. The standard Wright Flyer looked a bit different this time. Never having flown over water for any distance, Wilbur purchased a bright red canoe from a New York store, sealed it with a canvas cover, and strapped it between the skids on the underside as a flotation device. The short test flight was to determine what impact the canoe would have on the handling quality of the airplane.

  Satisfied that all was in order, Will announced that he would make his first public flight before noon. He took off and, to everyone’s delight, headed straight toward the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe’s Island. The airplane dipped into a sharp bank around the statue’s waist as the hundreds of ships gathered in the harbor for the celebration tooted and honked. The Wrights might eschew competition, but they had some showmanship in them.31

  High winds kept Wilbur and Curtiss on the ground the next two days. Curtiss made a second attempt to fly to Grant’s Tomb late on the evening of Saturday, October 2, but as before he was scarcely off the ground when he realized that flying was simply too dangerous in the prevailing high winds. Faced with another contract obligation in St. Louis in only four days, he withdrew from his agreement with the Aeronautic Committee.

  Wilbur turned up on Governors Island early on the morning of Monday, October 4, and announced that he was not only prepared to make the long flight as he had promised, but would combine it with the flight which Curtiss had contracted to make. He was off the ground at 9:53 that morning, the canoe still tied between the skids and two small American flags fluttering from the elevator struts. He flew ten miles up the Hudson, passing over the enormous fleet of U.S. and foreign ships assembled for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. One million New Yorkers witnessed some portion of the flight.

  Wilbur flew the twenty-mile round trip to Grant’s Tomb in 33 minutes, 33 seconds, averaging 36 miles per hour. “It was an interesting trip,” he wrote to Milton, “and at times rather exciting.” New Yorkers certainly thought so. For a time, Wilbur had recaptured the excitement of the year before.32

  Wilbur canceled a second flight planned for that afternoon when the engine blew a cylinder head straight through the top of the wing. He packed his gear and boarded a train for Washington the next morning. There was still one task to complete under the terms of the Army contract—pilot training for a select group of officers.

  The parade ground at Fort Myer had been only marginally acceptable as an area for the demonstration flights. A larger and more open spot would be required for the daily in-flight instruction. Frank Lahm found just such a place during the course of a balloon flight, a large pasture near the Maryland Agricultural College at College Park, a Washington suburb.

  When Wilbur reached College Park on October 6, the U.S. Army’s only flying machine, the aircraft flown at Fort Myer that spring, was waiting in the hangar at the new flying field. Wilbur made fifty-five flights between October 8 and November 2. Most of his time was devoted to teaching two students, Lieutenants Frank Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys, to fly. Benny Foulois, also desperate to go through the training course, had been ordered to represent the government at an aeronautical congress in France. He left early and reached College Park on October 19, in time to receive his first three lessons.

  Wilbur set his final record at College Park: 46 miles per hour over a measured 500-meter course. He also took a friend of Katharine’s, Mrs. Ralph Van Deman, aloft—the first American woman to fly from American soil. Wilbur’s final flight was a two-minute hop with Frank Lahm as a passenger on November 2. It was the last time he would ever fly in public, and one of his last flights as a pilot.33

  But if one era was ending, another had begun. While in New York for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Wilbur had met Clinton R. Peter-kin. Peterkin was only twenty-four years old, and looked younger, but his appearance and age belied his experience. He had gone to work as an office boy at the investment banking firm of J. P. Morgan at fifteen. Since that time, he had kept his eyes and ears open and had repeatedly demonstrated uncanny business judgment.34

  Recently recovered from an illness and anxious to make his mark in the world, Peterkin called on Wilbur at the Park Hotel, offering to spearhead the establishment of an American company to manufacture and sell Wright machines. Wilbur liked the brash young man. He listened to his proposition, then cautioned that he and his brother would only consider an arrangement in which important men of affairs, “men whose names would carry weight,” were involved.35

  Peterkin took the matter straight to J. P. Morgan. Morgan, who had met the Wrights in Europe the year before, was interested, and promised to attract his acquaintance, Elbert Gary, the head of U.S. Steel, into the venture. Peterkin next drew DeLancy Nicoll, a Wall Street lawyer, into the new firm. Nicoll, in turn, opened other doors. Within a matter of weeks Peterkin’s list of investors included Cornelius Vanderbilt; August Belmont; Morton Plant, chairman of the
board for the Southern Express Company and vice-president of the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville; Thomas F. Ryan, director of Bethlehem Steel; and Theodore P. Shonts, president of the New York Inter-borough subway.36

  Aware that things were moving more rapidly than he expected, Wilbur made a quick trip back to New York from College Park on October 29. Suitably impressed with the preliminary list of investors, he asked Peterkin to contact Russell and Fred Alger, of the Packard Motor Car Company, with whom the Wrights had earlier discussed forming a company. In addition, Robert Collier, of Collier’s Weekly, should be included. Many details remained. Peterkin discovered to his surprise that many of the largest investors objected to Morgan and Gary, convinced that they would dominate the board of directors. The two men voluntarily withdrew.37

  Wilbur was on the dock to meet Orville and Katharine when they disembarked from Europe on November 4. They traveled straight home to Dayton, where the family was reunited for the first time in many months. The first order of business was a financial stocktaking. Lorin, a bookkeeper by profession, had become the family accountant. Since the receipt of the original 25,000 franc forfeiture payment from the Letellier syndicate in 1906, he had deposited a quarter of a million dollars in local banks and building and loan associations.

  The money included the first payments from the French syndicate; the prize money and various cash awards earned or accepted in Europe in 1908; the fees paid by Pirelli and his Italian friends for the flights and flight training at Centocelle; and the payments from Short Brothers for the use of the Wright patents and the sale of several aircraft. Over the past six months alone they had received $30,000 from the Army contract, $48,000 from the two German contracts, and $12,500 of the agreed-upon $15,000 from the Hudson-Fulton Celebration committee. “It is doubtful whether I ever get any more,” Will remarked to his father on the subject of the Hudson-Fulton money. “The treasury is about empty.”38

  Now there was Peterkin’s proposal for an American Wright Company. If they agreed to the terms, they would receive $100,000 in cash for their patent rights and expertise. In addition, they would be given one third of the total shares, plus a 10 percent royalty on every machine built and sold. As the owner of the Wright patents, the new firm would take charge of prosecuting infringers, relieving the Wrights of all legal expenses, pursuing additional suits, and establishing a mechanism for licensing of patent rights.39

  The arrangement was ideal—the terms were excellent, and the investors men with impeccable credentials in the world of business and finance. The brothers signed.

  The Wright Company was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York on November 22, 1909, with a capital stock issue of $1 million. Wilbur would serve as president. Orville and Andrew Freedman, a New York financier, were elected vice-presidents. The board of directors included August Belmont, Robert J. Collier, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Alger.

  The future, as Wilbur told Chanute, seemed very bright indeed. “All of us are in very good health. Father, though in his eighty-second year, is still quite active. My own health owing to the outdoor life of the past year is better than in former years. I trust that you will retain well your strength and enjoyment of life.”40

  chapter 30

  OF POLITICS AND PATENTS

  January 1910

  The Wrights both hoped that the formation of the new company would remove the burden of business affairs from their shoulders, freeing them to return to research. As Wilbur explained to Chanute: “The general supervision of the business will be in our hands though a general manager will be secured to directly have charge. We will devote most of our time to experimental work.”1

  The new board of directors established corporate headquarters for the Wright Company in the Night and Day Bank Building at 527 Fifth Avenue, New York, but the factory would be in Dayton. Frank Russell, a cousin of Russell and Frank Alger, was hired as factory manager. He reported to the Wright Company in January 1910. Wilbur and Orville, cramped for space and loath to set up the manager of a major corporation in a bicycle repair shop, helped Russell find temporary quarters behind a plumbing store a block or so away.

  So far as they were concerned, that was the end of their involvement in the day-to-day operations of the front office. To underscore their disinterest in paperwork, Wilbur called on Russell a few days later carrying a container stuffed with letters addressed to the new company. “I don’t know what you want to do with this,” he remarked. “Maybe they should be opened. But of course if you open a letter, there’s always the danger that you may decide to answer it, and then you’re apt to find yourself involved in a long correspondence.”2

  While the brothers would no longer have to concern themselves with the sale of flying machines, only they could run the production side of the business.

  Ground was broken for a Wright Company factory at 2701 Home Road in Dayton in January 1910. Until that building was ready for operation in November, the Wrights rented factory space in a corner of the Speedwell Motor Car Company plant at 1420 Wisconsin Boulevard.3 The old pattern airplanes, what the brothers would always call their 1907 machines, were a thing of the past. The Wrights built two new prototype designs in the temporary quarters at Speedwell.

  They called the first of these new types the “Model B.” Clearly, while they had never applied the term “Model A” to the machines constructed since 1905, they thought of them as such. The Model B was a radical departure from its predecessors, with the elevator in the rear and wheels mounted on the skids. The development of a four-cylinder, 40-horsepower engine to propel the Model B enabled them to dispense with catapult launching. The Model R, a smaller, single-seat machine developed for speed and altitude competitions, was the second aircraft designed and built at Speedwell.

  So long as they were directly in charge, the Wrights paid meticulous attention to the details of the machines on which they would risk their lives. Grover Loening, who went to work as Orville’s assistant in 1913, recalled that his boss “directed all of the design work in the shop, even to small metal fittings, and many a time I had designed some detail and made a fine drawing of it, only to find that meanwhile Orville had gone into the shop and, with one of his old trusted mechanics, such as Charlie Taylor or Jim Jacobs, he would not only have designed the part, but had it made right there.”4

  But the Wrights’ primary goal was to establish their priority as the inventors of the airplane and to defend themselves against those who would profit at their expense. They chose the patent courts of America and Europe as their arena.

  On January 3, 1910, Judge Hazel of the Federal Circuit Court in Buffalo issued an injunction restraining the Herring-Curtiss Company from the manufacture, sale, or exhibition of airplanes. The decision surprised everyone but Wilbur and Orville. Patent complaints are adjudicated through a legal process as involved as any murder trial, and just as time-consuming. A difficult infringement suit may require many months, even years, to run its course, particularly if an appeal is involved.5

  In the case of Wright v. Herring-Curtiss, the opposing attorneys took hundreds of pages of sworn testimony. They collected reams of technical material, quizzed expert witnesses to buttress their arguments, and tied all of it together with complex legal briefs.

  The judge could not begin to weigh the evidence until he had command of the technical issues involved. His next step was to ensure that the examiner issuing the patent had correctly applied the confusing welter of regulations governing the patent process. Only then could he determine whether, and to what extent, the defendant had infringed on a protected feature of the invention.

  Fully aware of the length of time required, the Wrights sought to prevent Glenn Curtiss from profiting while the case was in progress. When Wilbur filed his suit in Buffalo on August 18, 1909, therefore, he also asked Judge Hazel to issue a preliminary injunction forbidding the Herring-Curtiss Company from using the technology in question until the court reached a decision.

  In view of the com
plexity of most patent suits and the ruinous consequences of such a restraint on the defendant, injunctions of this sort were uncommon. Knowledgeable individuals following Wright v. Herring-Curtiss assumed that the general rule would apply here as well. They were wrong. Judge Hazel, ruling that the evidence on hand was sufficient to indicate that the final judgment would support the Wrights, issued the injunction.

  Stunned, Curtiss posted a $10,000 bond with the court and filed an appeal. He could legally continue flying until the appelate court issued a ruling, but he took a terrible risk in doing so. If Judge Hazel’s decision was upheld, Curtiss would have to negotiate a settlement with the Wrights covering all of the monies earned during the time the injunction was in effect. It would spell financial ruin.

  Having dealt with Glenn Curtiss, the Wrights next took action to put foreign aviators out of business as well. On January 4, 1910, the day after the injunction was issued in Buffalo, the Wright Company filed for a second injunction restraining the French aviator Louis Paulhan from giving exhibition flights inside the United States with machines that infringed the Wright patent.

  Paulhan had won a Voisin machine in a model airplane competition in 1908, and emerged as one of the most popular and successful competitors at Reims. Invited to compete in an airshow to be held at Dominguez Field in Los Angeles, he arrived in New York in January 1910 with four machines—two Farmans and two Blériots. Taking the recent action of Judge Hazel into consideration, Judge Learned Hand, of the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, issued a restraint on February 17. Like Curtiss, Paulhan would have to post a bond ($25,000, later reduced to $6,000) if he wished to continue his exhibition flights prior to the adjudication of his case. Having already earned some $20,000 at Los Angeles and other points on his U.S. tour, Paulhan returned to France.6