Unlocking the Sky

by Seth Shulman

  Orville did finally decide to bequeath the original Wright Flyer to the Smithsonian Institution but only after demanding a formal apology for the institution’s role in the Langley aerodrome affair thirty-four years earlier. He even got then-secretary Charles G. Abbot to vow never to publish or display any statement that even lends the impression that an aircraft design prior to the Wright Flyer of 1903 could have been capable of successful piloted flight.

  Abbot held out against some of Orville’s demands. He refused, given the lack of hard evidence, to impugn the reputation of his predecessor Walcott and the others involved in the reconstruction of Langley’s aerodrome. After lengthy negotiations, however, Abbot did agree to publish an apology for the confusion and consternation the incident caused as well as the list that Orville had cataloged of alleged modifications that the Curtiss team made to the Langley aerodrome.

  As for Curtiss’s company: the development of the Curtiss JN airplane—the “Jenny”—would ensure its success. After reviewing the Jenny’s specifications and noting its comparatively reasonable price tag, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the British Admiralty, ordered the British military to “accept everything America can produce to these specifications.” Ultimately, the British would order thousands of them, and the Curtiss firm would manufacture more than six thousand Jennies by the end of World War I. The airplane was a two-seater, ideal for training; in fact, the vast majority of the almost ten thousand American wartime pilots were trained to fly these planes. The Jenny would formally initiate airmail for the U.S. Postal Service in 1918 and, after the war, the Jenny would become a favorite plane of the exhibition fliers in the 1920s known as the barnstormers.

  With the Hammondsport plant swamped with orders for the Jenny, Curtiss reorganized and expanded to a facility in Buffalo, New York, employing as many as twenty thousand workers at its peak of production. Yet the corporate roster retained many familiar names: Harry Genung served as company vice president and plant manager; Henry Kleckler worked as a design engineer; Monroe Wheeler served as the company’s general counsel. Also high in the hierarchy were Charles Manly, Albert Zahm, and a host of others in the aviation field with whom Curtiss had worked and who were eager to join his activities.

  Much later, in 1929, the two large airplane firms merged to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. The companies’ combined stock was valued at $220 million immediately following the merger.

  By this time, given the speed with which the aviation field was developing, both Orville Wright and Glenn Curtiss had backed away from central positions of authority in their respective organizations. It happened much earlier for Orville, but the fact is, it quickly became clear to both men that they were from a different time. Aviation was moving into an altogether new phase of engineering and production, one well beyond their hands-on kind of technical expertise.

  In these years, Curtiss became famous for his largesse with former workers and those who had helped him along the way. He would regularly check to make sure his old workers and supporters had everything they might need. For intimates like Kleckler and Genung, Curtiss built houses in Florida and offered them a long stream of gifts over the years.

  Orville’s world, on the other hand, closed in ever more tightly around him as the years went by. He lived until 1948, but for many years he rarely left Dayton and hardly even left his Hawthorne Hill mansion, choosing to live the life of a recluse and dedicate himself, as he would put it, “to putting Wilbur’s papers in order.” Orville never piloted an airplane after 1914 or even flew in one after 1918. Much of his work during the three decades after settling his lawsuit with Curtiss was devoted to fiercely guarding the Wright brothers’ legacy.

  At the time of the corporate merger, while he had no say in the matter, Orville was reported to have fumed not only over the prospect of joining with Curtiss’s company, but especially at the indignity of having Curtiss’s name precede his in the new company’s title. It was, of course, a simple reflection of the relative size and power of the two firms.

  Around this time, many prosperous years after their bitter battle, Curtiss wrote Orville a personal note, suggesting a meeting and a casual talk to lay aside old grudges.

  His letter remained unanswered.

  APPENDIX

  A PARTIAL LIST OF INVENTIONS BY GLENN CURTISS1

  Listed below are some of the 500 inventions credited to Glenn Curtiss, primarily those specifically related to aircraft design. Asterisks denote a device for which Curtiss received a patent.

  *Aileron (with Aerial Experiment Association)

  Wind wagon for propeller testing

  Twist-handle motorcycle throttle control

  Wind tunnel design

  Shoulder-yoke aileron control

  Hydro-aeroplane (now known as seaplane)

  *Hydro-aeroplane pontoon

  Hydroplane step for pontoons

  Tricycle landing gear

  Amphibian airplane

  Single-hulled flying boat

  Machine for forming laminated wood ribs

  Laminated-wood propeller and forming machine

  Method of joining wood parts in airplane construction

  Aerodynamically balanced rudder

  Enclosed airplane cockpit

  Biplane elevator control system for dirigibles

  Steel propeller design

  Crankcase reduction gear for propeller drive

  Steering system for landing gear

  Combined skid and wheel landing gear

  Wheel brake for airplanes

  Electrically operated throttle control

  Retractable landing gear (with Hugh Robinson)

  System of compression bracing for wings

  Double-surface wings

  Watertight double-surface wings

  Interplane drift trussing for wings

  Pontoon frame construction

  *Compartmented pontoon

  Propeller-tip reinforcement

  Submerged hydroplanes

  *Longitudinally continuous pontoon

  Friction throttle control

  *Dual controls for airplanes

  Dual foot control

  *Vent tubes to hydroplane step

  Ship catapult launching device for aircraft

  Aircraft landing and takeoff system from a ship

  Wing beam construction

  System of airplane anchorage

  Folding hood

  *Gyroscopic aircraft stabilizer (with Elmer Sperry)

  V-bottom flying-boat hull

  Multi-engine flying boat

  Life preserver design

  Adjusting and locking mechanism for retractable landing gear

  Detachable airplane wings

  Airplane drag brake

  Folding operating brace for control surfaces

  Tank suspension for upper wing

  Streamlined radiator design

  Streamlined landing gear

  SOURCES

  George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher (and contemporary of Glenn Curtiss’s), is famous for noting that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But Santayana also proposed that “history is always written wrong. So it always needs to be rewritten.” The sentiment propelled me through many partisan accounts of aviation’s early history and will, no doubt, encourage others to revise my interpretations and correct my mistakes.

  Whenever possible, this work derives from primary sources, such as letters, cables, photographs, and journalistic accounts from the period. Many of these materials reside at two archives: the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, New York, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland. Of particular help at the Curtiss Museum were copies of the Bulletin of the AEA, transcriptions of private cables sent from Jim Smellie’s pharmacy, collected oral histories from some of Curtiss’s relatives and coworkers, as well as numerous collections of newspaper clippings about Curtiss and voluminous, uncataloged boxes of postcards,
photographs, and memorablia related to his life and work. I also benefited from a rare copy of Curtiss’s 1912 autobiography, The Glenn Curtiss Story, especially its detailed, first-person account of the 1910 Hudson River flight. In addition, the cavernous museum houses a full-scale replica of the June Bug and many original Curtiss artifacts, including his early motorcycles and flying boats.

  Particularly helpful primary sources in the Smithsonian’s collection include Charles Walcott’s personal photographic record of the aerodrome reconstruction, Alexander Graham Bell’s voluminous and wide-ranging aviation scrapbooks—technically labeled the “Early Aeronautical Newsclipping (Alexander Graham Bell) Collection—1906–1911”—and important selections from the correspondence of Octave Chanute. Also helpful were the Glenn H. Curtiss Collection, the Samuel P. Langley Collection, the Early Aeronautical Patent Collection, and the impressive William Hammer Collection, including many rare programs, schedules, pamphlets, and even menus from some of aviation’s most important meets and gatherings.

  As useful as these resources were, my book also relies heavily on many excellent books and articles about Curtiss and early aviation. First among them is Cecil R. Roseberry’s meticulous biography, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight. Interested readers are referred to Roseberry’s far more thorough treatment of Curtiss’s life. Roseberry is to be especially commended for interviewing many of the last remaining individuals with personal reminiscences about Curtiss, something that is now, alas, impossible to replicate. Other noteworthy volumes on Curtiss include Alden Hatch’s 1942 work, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation, and Clara Studer’s 1937 book, Sky Storming Yankee.

  Published works of special note also include: Octave Chanute’s Progress in Flying Machines (1894), a book that more than any other conveys the ferment in aviation research around the turn of the century; the collected papers of Albert Zahm; Samuel Pierpont Langley’s posthumously published account of the aerodrome’s development; the Wright brothers’ collected papers; Charles Gibbs-Smith’s authoritative volumes on early aviation history—especially the primary source material he collected about the 1909 Grande Semaine d’Aviation in Rheims, France; Jack Carpenter’s quirky but useful volume Pendulum, a compendium of excerpted source material about Curtiss, the Wrights, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, and others of the period; David Baker’s encyclopedic Flight and Flying: A Chronology, offering dates and capsule descriptions of every important milestone in aviation from 850 B.C. through 1991; and Phil Scott’s The Pioneers of Flight: A Documentary History, a readable and well-chosen selection of writings by many of the important early figures in aviation history including Cayley, Ader, Mouillard, Bleriot, and many others.

  A complete bibliography follows:

  Abbot, Charles G. The 1914 Tests of the Langley “Aerodrome.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Vol. 103, No. 8. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, October 1942.

  ———. Samuel Pierpont Langley. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Vol. 92, No. 8. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, August 22, 1934.

  ———. The Relations Between the Smithsonian Institution and the Wright Brothers. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1928.

  Bell, Alexander Graham. The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, 1862–1939. Online collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Available at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html.

  ———. “Aerial Locomotion,” address before the Washington Academy of Sciences, December 13, 1906. Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences VIII (March 1907): 407–48.

  Brashear, John A. The Autobiography of a Man Who Loved the Stars. Ed.W. Lucien Scaife. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925.

  Brewer, Griffith. “The Langley Machine and the Hammondsport Trials.” Aeronautical Journal 25, no. 132 (December 1921): 620–44.

  Brown, Carrie. “Man in Motion.” Invention and Technology (Spring 1991): 50–57.

  Brown, R. J. “Alexander Graham Bell and the Garfield Assassination.” The History Buff. Online resource at www.discovery.com.

  Bruce, Robert V. “Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude.” In Technology in America: A History of Individuals and Ideas, ed. Carroll W. Pursell Jr. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981.

  Callander, Bruce D. “Five Smart Men Who Didn’t Invent the Airplane.” Air Force Magazine, (January 1990): 88–94.

  ———. “The Critical Twist.” Air Force Magazine (September 1989): 150–56.

  Casey, Louis. Curtiss: The Hammondsport Era. New York: Crown Publishers, 1981.

  Cayley, George. “On Aerial Navigation.” Nicholson’s Journal of Philosophy XXIV (1809): 164–74. Reprinted in James Means, ed. Aeronautical Annual, 1895.

  Chaikin, Andrew. Air and Space: The National Air and Space Museum Story of Flight. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1997.

  Chanute, Octave. Progress in Flying Machines. New York: American Engineer and Railroad Journal, 1894. Reissued Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1997.

  ———. “Scientific Invention.” Address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, August 1886. Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. XXXV. Salem, Mass.: Salem Press, 1886.

  Crouch, Tom D. The Bishops Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

  ———. “The Feud Between the Wright Brothers and the Smithsonian.” Invention and Technology (Spring 1987): 34–46.

  ———. A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875–1905. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.

  Curtiss Aeroplane Company. Curtiss Aeroplanes. Catalog booklet published by the firm c. 1912. Reprinted by the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, Hammondsport, N.Y., 1986.

  Curtiss, Glenn H. “The Commercial Side of Aviation: Business Possibilities of the Aeroplane.” The Saturday Evening Post. October 1, 1910.

  ———, and Augustus Post. The Curtiss Aviation Book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912.

  Dollfus, Charles, and Henri Bouche. Histoire de l’Aeronautique. Paris: Editions Saint-Georges, 1942.

  Eklund, Don Dean. Captain Thomas S. Baldwin: Pioneer American Aeronaut. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1970.

  Flink, James J. America Adopts the Automobile, 1895–1910. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970.

  Gibbs-Smith, Charles H. The Rebirth of Aviation 1902–1908. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974.

  ———. Aviation: An Historical Survey from Its Origins to the End of World War II. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970.

  ———. Sir George Cayley, 1773–1857. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1968.

  ———. The Invention of the Aeroplane (1799–1909). New York: Taplinger, 1965.

  Goldstrom, John. A Narrative History of Aviation. New York: Macmillan Company, 1930.

  Grahame-White, Claude. The Story of the Aeroplane. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1911.

  Grey, Charles G. The Air Cadet’s Handbook on How an Aeroplane Flies. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1941.

  Grosvenor, Edwin S., and Morgan Wesson. Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997.

  Hammondsport Herald. Selected editions, 1903–1915.

  Hatch, Alden. Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation. New York: Julian Messner, Inc. 1942.

  Hodgins, Eric. “Heavier Than Air (Profile of Orville Wright).” New Yorker (December 13, 1930): 29–32.

  Hodgins, Eric, and F. Alexander Magoun. Sky High: The Story of Aviation. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1929.

  Howard, Fred. Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987.

  Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970. New York: Viking, 1989.

  Jakab, Peter L. Visions of Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

  Josephy
, Alvin M. Jr., ed. The American Heritage History of Flight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.

  Kelly, Fred C. The Wright Brothers: A Biography Authorized by Orville Wright. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943.

  Kelly, Fred C., ed. Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1951.

  Kirk, Stephen. First in Flight: The Wright Brothers in North Carolina. Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair Publisher, 1995.

  Langley, Samuel Pierpont, and Charles M. Manly. Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight. Vols. 1 and 2. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1911.

  Larson, George C. “Glenn Curtiss: The Innovator.” Business and Commercial Aviation (February 1982): 44–46.

  Levinson, Nancy Smiler. Turn of the Century: Our Nation One Hundred Years Ago. New York: Dutton, 1994.

  Loening, Grover. Our Wings Grow Faster. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1935.

  Marrero, Frank. Lincoln Beachey: The Man Who Owned the Sky. San Francisco: Scottwall Associates, 1997.

  McFarland, Marvin W., ed. The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Vol. 1, 1899–1905. Vol. 2, 1906–1948. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953.

  Means, James, ed. Epitome of the Aeronautical Annual. Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1910.

  Mouillard, L. F. L’Empire de l’Air: Paris: 1881. Extracted and translated version under title “The Empire of the Air” reprinted in Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst. (1892): 397–463.

  Munson, Kenneth. Pioneer Aircraft 1903–14. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

  Newcomb, Simon. Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science: Essays and Addresses by Simon Newcomb. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906.

  Park, Edwards. “Langley’s Feat—and Folly.” Smithsonian (November 1997) 30–34.

  Pisano, Dominick A., and Cathleen Lewis, eds. Air and Space History: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing in association with National Air and Space Museum, 1988.

  Post, Augustus. “The Evolution of a Flying Man: Incidents in the Experience of Glenn H. Curtiss with Motors and Aeroplanes.” Century Magazine (c. 1910).