by Seth Shulman
The press, too, is caught up in the excitement. As one flowery newspaper dispatch to America crows: “Never since history began have there been witnessed such scenes of wonder…so presagent of a change in the life of man upon earth.”
Armand Fallières, president of France, along with leading members of his government, are among the dignitaries from a score of countries attending the meet. The king of Belgium is in attendance. High-ranking military observers, like General John French of Great Britain, have come to see what flying machines can actually do, as has a delegation of engineers sent by the emperor of Japan. David Lloyd George, soon to be British prime minister, attends Rheims and is deeply impressed. “Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams,” he says, “they are an established fact. The possibilities of this new system of locomotion are infinite.”
Finally, toward the end of the first day, the weather clears just enough to fly. White flags appear on the distant hangars, alerting the public that a demonstration is about to begin. The three Wright Flyers, piloted by Paul Tissandier, the Comte de Lambert, and Eugene Lefebvre, take to the sky in a preliminary display.
Lefebvre ascends to three hundred feet, dives to within a few feet of the ground, then climbs while the Comte de Lambert flies beneath him. As a French correspondent puts it, the crowd is treated to a preview of “the wonders that the near future has in store for us.”
Excitement builds as the week progresses. Many aviation records are broken. At one point, seven airplanes take to the skies together, an awesome sight for aviators and spectators alike. Curtiss, however, holds back. With only one plane to gamble, he resists the urgings of others to enter any of the other competitions before the most prestigious speed race.
Curtiss does, however, make a number of short practice flights to get familiar with his new airplane and make sure it is functioning properly. Even these forays underscore the risk involved. At the end of one of his test flights, he lands off the track and is thrown out of the plane as it veers into a field of tall grain. Spraining his ankle, Curtiss is forced for the rest of the meet to walk with a borrowed cane.
During breaks from their avid interest in the action in the skies, Curtiss and his mechanics work with one all-important goal in mind: to coax as much speed as they can from their airplane. The Wright brothers, however, have something quite different planned. Having striven arduously to secure patents all over the world, they now intend to control the field and collect royalties from all practitioners. And they decide to crack down on what they perceive as patent infringement at a time that will create maximum impact: just as the first international air meet heads into full swing. To their way of thinking, every airplane on the field at Rheims, except the three of their own models, infringes upon the brothers’ patents.
Five days after Curtiss sails from New York, Orville Wright goes to Berlin for a series of demonstration flights, in an agreement with the just-organized German Wright Company. Angered at all the press Curtiss has been receiving, he writes Wilbur before leaving: “I think best plan is to start suit against Curtiss, Aeronautic Society, etc., at once. This will call attention of public to fact that the machine [Gold Bug] is an infringement of ours.” And Wilbur responds: “If the suit is brought before the races are run at Rheims, the effect will be better than after.” With Orville in Berlin, trying to close a deal with the German government, Wilbur has busied himself filing suit against Curtiss. As he explains to Orville: “Trophies are one thing, business another.”
The Wrights’ opening salvo, the day Curtiss first assembles his plane in Rheims, is to file suit against the Aeronautic Society as the buyer of Curtiss’s Gold Bug. They seek a court order to stop the society from exhibiting the plane, asking for financial damages, and insisting that the plane be destroyed. Within a few days, the Wrights’ lawyers also serve papers in Hammondsport on Mrs. Lena Curtiss and Lynn D. Masson, secretary-treasurer of Curtiss’s firm, charging them with infringing their wing-warping patent. In Hammondsport, Judge Monroe Wheeler gives out a statement in his capacity as the Curtiss company’s president and head counsel: “These suits will be defended, and it will be the policy of the defense to disprove all claims of infringement.”
News of the Wrights’ suit spreads quickly, shocking the fliers at Rheims. The overwhelming reaction of the European aviators is antagonistic to the Wrights for trying to establish a monopoly on flight. A patent fight is bad enough, but the timing seems particularly vindictive, considering that Curtiss is the sole U.S. representative in a world championship contest the Wrights have refused to enter. Many of the French fliers offer moral support to Curtiss; after all, they too are vulnerable to the Wrights’ aggressive legal maneuvering. But, for now, Curtiss will bear the brunt of it.
The support of the French fliers bolsters Curtiss’s confidence that the AEA’s ailerons are a distinct and separate invention from the Wrights’ technique of bending an airplane’s wings. Ailerons operate completely separately from the airplane’s rigid wings, tilting to create extra drag on one side of the airplane or the other to correct unwanted lateral tilting in flight. Far simpler and more efficient than the Wrights’ system, which needs to be tied into the plane’s rudder, ailerons are already becoming the industry standard. Reflecting the prevailing sentiment at the meet, Curtiss wires home not to worry. “No one here thinks there is any infringement,” he writes to Lena, adding optimistically that the Wrights’ suit might be a bluff.
Curtiss will learn soon enough that the Wrights are not bluffing. For the time being though, the clouds that have plagued the air meet finally begin to lift, even if the Wrights, in one dramatically timed move, have managed to hang dark psychological ones over Curtiss.
The weeklong meet reaches its climax on Saturday, August 28, with the race for the Gordon Bennett Trophy. Despite the Wrights’ machinations, Curtiss, an intense competitor, has a race to win. He has an athlete’s ability to shut out everything but the event at hand, born of long years racing bicycles and motorcycles. And in this case, he wills himself to put aside all thought of the Wrights’ legal claims for the moment, letting the Gordon Bennett Trophy—without question, the most coveted prize of the meet—occupy his full attention.
Contenders for the $5,000 prize and trophy donated by the newspaper mogul must fly twice around the rectangular ten-kilometer course, staying to the outside of pylons several stories tall that mark the airfield’s four corners. The way the race is organized, the contestants can make their official flight at any time between 10:00 A.M. and 5:30 P.M. Curtiss, who has always favored flying at the first light of day, decides to make his practice run at the earliest possible moment. At ten o’clock sharp, it is, finally, a perfect summer morning, clear and windless. In his brown leather jacket and visored cap, Curtiss takes his place in the pilot’s seat. His lithe aircraft seems to almost hop into the air on takeoff, and the crowd watches his practice run intently.
Once Curtiss is aloft, his Rheims Racer jolts and rocks roughly through the course. The air, as Curtiss later describes it, is “boiling,” with strong thermal updrafts caused by the now-hot summer sun beating on the open plain. The effect in flight is like repeatedly hitting vicious, invisible boulders while traveling in an automobile at high speed. Landing safely after the trial, Curtiss is unhurt, but he is badly shaken by the turbulent flight. Checking his time, though, Curtiss realizes that if he can power his way through the bumps, the windless morning is likely to offer the day’s best conditions.
He decides to make his official flight for the trophy without delay.
This time, after takeoff, Curtiss stuns the sea of spectators by circling higher and higher to nearly 500 feet, then swooping into a steep dive to build as much speed as he can across the starting line. Full throttle into his official trial, Curtiss draws upon his experience as a motorcycle racer to lean sharply into the turns. He banks so steeply and shaves the pylons so closely, in fact, that many in the stands gasp, sure he will clip his wings. The stunned crowd has never seen anyone fly
this way before, nor has Curtiss ever pushed an airplane so hard. All the while, he has to contend with turbulence that has grown even stronger since his practice run. The violent shocks lift him completely out of his seat. Curtiss has to wedge his feet tightly against the airplane’s frame to keep from being thrown from the pilot’s seat.
As Curtiss sweeps past the finish line and slows to a landing, a mob of cheering Americans rushes upon him. He has set a new world’s record, flying the course in just under 16 minutes, with an average air speed of 46.5 miles per hour. As the first contestant to fly, however, Curtiss must now sit by and watch the other contenders, each time wondering if they will beat his time. It is a fate he likens later to that of “a prisoner awaiting the jury’s verdict.”
Over the course of the morning, there is much to see. The British flier George Cockburn runs into a haystack on his flight and fails to finish his trial. Latham makes his try in the afternoon, flying at low altitude, as he always prefers to do, ending the run with an average speed 5 miles per hour slower than Curtiss’s. Most of the other contestants, like Farman, do not even come that close, averaging about 35 miles per hour at their top speeds.
Notably, most of the other entries easily outpace the Wright planes. Even in 1909, the fundamental limitations of their design are evident. Much the way a bicycle cannot maintain its balance unless it is moving, the Wrights have purposefully designed their planes to be inherently unstable, believing, mistakenly, that this is an essential factor to control in the air. As a result, the Wright Flyers are especially difficult to fly and require the pilots to actively control them in all three dimensions—pitch, roll, and yaw—during every moment they are airborne.
Bleriot, however, has yet to fly.
All day long, Bleriot tinkers with his assorted airplanes. He adjusts the engine on one and attaches a new propeller to another. Over the course of the day, he takes several practice laps but touches down each time, frowning, dissatisfied with some aspect of his aircraft.
By late afternoon, Bleriot has settled upon Number 22, his largest airplane and the one Curtiss fears most. It is equipped with the much-ballyhooed eight-cylinder, 80-horsepower motor. Equally worrisome to Curtiss, Bleriot fits the plane with a large, four-blade propeller.
As the afternoon progresses, Bleriot’s delays cause mounting concern among the quarter million mostly French spectators assembled for the main event. Finally, at the last possible moment, Bleriot signals that he is ready. It is 5:10 P.M., just twenty minutes before the race’s official close. The tension of a long day has begun to wear on Curtiss. When he sees Bleriot take off, he is sure the Frenchman will prevail. As Curtiss later recalls, “It looked to me as if he must be going twice as fast as my machine had flown.”
Bleriot doesn’t bank his large craft the way Curtiss had, but he makes two flawless laps of the course and lands to thundering applause from the mostly French crowd. As Bleriot walks over to the judges’ booth, Curtiss keeps a respectful distance. The crowd is absolutely quiet until the silence is suddenly pierced by a joyous shout from near the judges’ stand. It emanates from none other than Cortlandt Bishop. Flailing his arms, Bishop runs to Curtiss, shouting, “You win! You win!” As Bishop explains, Curtiss has beaten Bleriot’s time by six seconds.
Almost before Curtiss can comprehend the news, the band strikes up the “Star-Spangled Banner” and an American flag is raised above the judges’ stand. The predominantly French audience, stunned at first, graciously joins in the raucous applause of the American delegation to honor Curtiss’s achievement. Newsreel footage shows a young American beaming at the apex of his career. Henry White, the U.S. ambassador to France, rushes from his box in the grandstand with his party—including Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, wife of the ex-president (Teddy is away hunting big game in Africa) and three of the Roosevelt children, Ethel, Quentin, and Archie—to congratulate Curtiss in the name of the government and people of the United States. By Bishop’s side, James Gordon Bennett swaggers over to shake Curtiss’s hand, beaming as though he had believed in Curtiss all along.
Just then, Bleriot bursts into the midst of the patriotic scene. He flings his arms around the surprised and flustered Curtiss and kisses him heartily on both cheeks.
The close of the Grande Semaine d’Aviation throws France further into its frenzy of aeronautical excitement. As news of Curtiss’s upset victory spreads, the always shy aviator is nearly overwhelmed by his sudden celebrity. He is the subject of adulation everywhere he goes. Kings, ministers, and wealthy socialites deluge him with offers to fly his plane all over Europe. Bishop calls his feat, “the greatest sporting victory the world has seen.” Banner headlines proclaim him “Champion Aviator of the World,” and, recalling his past glory on his motorcycle, “Fastest Man of the Earth and Skies.”
Christening its new hot-air balloon the Curtiss No. 1, the Aéro-Club de France urges him to ride as passenger on its maiden voyage along with Bleriot and Bishop. In his first ascent in a spherical balloon and basking in his good fortune, Curtiss marvels at the breathtaking French countryside below as Bishop’s chauffeur follows them on the ground to drive them back to Paris at the end of the day.
As proud as he is for what he has accomplished, Curtiss would have preferred to go back to tinkering quietly with new improvements to his airplane. He is distraught by the Wrights’ lawsuit and knows he must swiftly return to handle his company’s affairs. Plus, he misses Lena; never again will he leave her behind on a major trip. But tonight he must attend a dinner in his honor at the U.S. embassy where five hundred elegantly attired people will dine in stately splendor. As the New York World accurately reports, Curtiss seems to “fear ceremony more than he fears the most perilous flight.”
The guest of honor has little choice but to attend, but Curtiss does try to get Bishop to arrange it so no one will call upon him to make a speech. The effort is futile. The moment Curtiss walks into the grand dining room, arm in arm with Bleriot, he receives a standing ovation, and he remains the center of attention for the entire evening. Ambassador and Mrs. Henry White are particularly gentle and kind hosts. And Curtiss finds neither the gold-plate service nor the lavish repast as intimidating as he has imagined. But, as he recalls later, “when they wanted me to stand up and make a speech, I was lost.” Nonetheless, the audience is forgiving. Curtiss has earned their admiration the hard way: in the sky. And they are willing to crown him the master of it, tongue-tied or not.
To make it official, his latest accolade, the Gordon Bennett Trophy, sits prominently in the middle of the table of honor. Curtiss finally gets a chance to inspect it for himself. It is a large, silver sculpture that fittingly depicts a person climbing a mountain and reaching upward toward an intricately detailed airplane. It is a handsome award, but Curtiss notices at once its fundamental irony: the hiker is reaching toward a precise and unmistakable rendering of a Wright Flyer.
PART III
WARPED WINGS
EIGHT
GROUNDED
Mr. Curtiss’s opinion, as expressed to us at Rheims, is that the proprietors of the Wright patents think no one can make an aeroplane without them and, said he, “they’re about the only people who do think so.”
NEW YORK DAILY TELEGRAPH, 1909
Following his victory at Rheims, an assortment of Europe’s royalty and wealthy socialites fete Curtiss for nearly two weeks and acclaim him an international hero. But for Curtiss nothing can match his homecoming in September 1909. On a cool, damp evening, as his train pulls into the Hammondsport station, Curtiss marvels wide-eyed as the skies over Lake Keuka explode with an extravagant fireworks display to mark his arrival.
As Curtiss makes his way among the jubilant crowd, bonfires blaze by the lake and the ground shakes with the boom of ceremonial cannon fire. A committee of admirers has erected a triumphal arch across from the station, with the word “Welcome” emblazoned in electric lights. The entire town is festooned with American flags. Corks from New York champagne bottles pop into the air all ar
ound him and people raise glasses brimming with the local bubbly in tribute. And, of course, there is an outdoor stage in the center of town where it seems everyone Curtiss knows expects him to make a speech. Yet even here before the adoring assemblage of friends and neighbors—and with Lena at his side—words mostly fail him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, visibly overcome by the festivities, “I’m back from France. Had a very nice time. Had a whole lot of luck and a little success. As you know,” he continues haltingly, “I just had a common school education. I didn’t learn any words big enough to show you my appreciation of this welcome home.”
His words are quite big enough for Hammondsport and the town elders are especially proud. Their local son with his common school education has accomplished a remarkable feat on the world stage. Of his own initiative and after only an extraordinarily short period of experimentation, he designed and built an airplane that proved itself the fastest in the world. In France, when the editors of the magazine L’Auto assessed the aerodynamic efficiency of the different planes at the Rheims meet, they rated Curtiss’s plane number one and ranked the Wright Flyers in last place.
But, for all the accolades and festivities, Curtiss can’t shake a sense of foreboding. He may have mastered the engineering and technical aspects of the airplane, but he is far less confident about the legal quagmire looming before him.
Most pressing is the fiasco that has come of his alliance with Augustus Herring, which he had hoped would reap rich rewards in the young aviation field. Herring has failed to deliver the vital working capital he had promised in his partnership with Curtiss; even more worrisome, he has refused to reveal a single item of his vaunted inventions and patents. By now it seems painfully obvious to everyone in Curtiss’s company that Herring is an unscrupulous fraud. As Curtiss will lament to Cortlandt Bishop, who has invested in the company, Herring “has fooled Mr. Chanute, Hiram Maxim, Professor Langley, and the U.S. government.” Now, Curtiss writes, he has “deceived you and me.”