Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Bell had no sons of his own and the AEA lads quickly became surrogates.1 Selfridge seems to have particularly caught the fancy of both Bell and his wife. The tetrahedral machine was to be the group’s first project and Bell assumed that his charges felt the same enthusiasm for the project as did he. While it would be an overstatement to assert that the younger members were merely humoring the older man, none of the other members of the group held out much hope for the contraption. In fact, it became clear early on that their benefactor would contribute little to any practical progress. Nonetheless, they built his motorized kite, a forty-two-foot-wide enormity called the Cygnet, which contained 3,393 of his treasured tetrahedrons, each made of red silk, open in the front to allow for airflow, with a section in the middle cut out for a pilot.

  On December 6, 1907, the giant kite with its forty-two-foot wingspan was hauled out on a scow to the middle of Bras d’Or, the lake abutting Bell’s home. Curtiss had built a motor but Bell wanted to test it first as a glider, so the Cygnet was tethered to a motorboat. Selfridge had been chosen as pilot and, like the Wrights, he lay prone in a cutout in the center. Bell had been correct about lifting power; a gust of wind took the kite into the air, where for seven minutes Selfridge took readings. But the Cygnet was inherently uncontrollable and at a shift of the wind, the kite hurtled downward, crashing into the lake. Selfridge was pulled from the freezing water unhurt but the fragile kite with its thousands of cells was severely damaged.

  Bell wanted to rebuild the Cygnet and try again but according to the terms of the agreement the members had signed, they could move on to a design of one of the others. Everyone by this time had ideas he wished to try. Selfridge, by virtue of his adventure in the water, was chosen to be first. The group also decided to relocate to Hammondsport, a far more convenient location, and where the facilities of the Curtiss Manufacturing Company would be at their disposal.

  By March 1908, Selfridge had designed and the group had built a bi-wing craft dubbed Red Wing, named for the red silk fabric left over from the Cygnet. The wings bowed from the center “like horizontal parentheses,” and narrowed at the ends. The upper wing had a span of forty-two feet and came to a point; the lower was six feet shorter and truncated at the tips. The wings had an average chord of slightly more than five feet. Curtiss, as he did with all AEA constructions, designed and built the motor. The Red Wing was fitted with a fixed, single-pane rudder and no mechanism for pilot control. Selfridge himself wrote, “This was the virgin attempt of Aerial Experiment Association to construct a motor driven aeroplane and hence we were not over-sanguine of success at the first trials.” To the surprise of everyone, however, on March 12 the machine actually went airborne, taking off from the frozen surface of Lake Keuka and flying more than three hundred feet in a wide arc before clipping its right wing and crashing on the ice. Such was the continued mystery surrounding the Wrights that the Red Wing’s short hop was billed in a number of newspapers as “the first public flight in America.”

  The group considered it a great success. The next venture should have been assigned to Baldwin, who had piloted the craft, but he decided to work jointly with Curtiss. Using data from the Red Wing flight, the two designed White Wing, another biplane, this one with a front elevator and movable rear rudder. Curtiss suggested a steering wheel instead of levers and supplied a three-wheel system copied from motorcycle sidecars rather than skids. But the most significant feature was the addition of movable structures at the end of the wings, what would later be called ailerons.*1

  The group had all realized the necessity of addressing lateral control. There was no suggestion of wing warping. By all accounts, the aileron system was Bell’s suggestion, although where he originally came by the idea was never firmly established.2 But a number of experimenters—perhaps even Mouillard—had either hypothesized about movable wing tips or had even experimented with them.3 Subsequently, a number of designers claimed to have been the source of the idea, including the ubiquitous Augustus Herring, who insisted he had employed ailerons in his 1894 glider, an assertion that appeared another fabrication. Herring’s gliders never got off the ground far enough to make lateral stability an issue. And if he had attained lateral stability, why would he have abandoned ailerons on later models?

  Herring notwithstanding, the design of the White Wing is cited by Wright proponents as further evidence that Curtiss stole from them. But in addition to the fact that the idea was almost certainly not Curtiss’s, there was an exchange of letters between the Wrights and Curtiss a few months before that become odd if Curtiss harbored larcenous intent.

  On December 30, 1907, he wrote to the brothers on AEA stationery, which listed him as “Director of Experiments.” After noting that he had been following the development of their aircraft, he said, “I just wish to keep in touch with you and let you know that we have been making considerable progress in engine construction.” Curtiss then went into great detail, far more than the Wrights would have done, on the specifications of his motors, which varied from 15 to 40 horsepower and “embody the same design as our cycle motors which, as you have heard, develop more power for the cylinder capacity than any others.” He then offered Wilbur and Orville a motor at no cost “as we have great confidence in them.” Then Curtiss said something even more curious for one man purportedly planning on stealing from another. “The writer has been getting rather deeply mixed in Aeronautics and Hammondsport is getting to be quite a headquarters for this class of work.” Curtiss concluded by inviting both to visit and “to make you guests as long as you would care to stay.”

  While it is possible that this was all a ruse designed to put the Wrights at their ease while Curtiss hatched his plot, or that Curtiss only decided to steal from them after it was written, far more likely is that the letter was written by a man who saw himself innocent, both then and in the foreseeable future, of any act that might be considered improper. This is not to say that he was innocent—that again depends on how one views the limits of innovation—simply that he believed he was.

  The Wrights had no interest, but their response was warm. “We remember your visit to Dayton with pleasure,” the two-paragraph letter closed. “The experience we had together in helping Captain Baldwin back to the fair grounds was one not soon to be forgotten. When you see the Captain, please remember him to us.”

  In any event, the rudimentary system, fashioned by Curtiss and controlled by body motions of the pilot, was installed on the White Wing for its first flight on May 22, 1908. With Curtiss at the controls, it flew at a height of about ten feet for nineteen seconds, covering a measured 1,017 feet. Similar flights followed until White Wing was wrecked when the ailerons were shifted incorrectly by McCurdy. The system worked so well that Bell filed for a patent on the aileron system jointly with the other members of the AEA.

  The success of White Wing threw open the doors of powered flight. With French aviators already covering five, then six, then ten kilometers, with Léon Levavasseur refining his lightweight Antoinette motor, and others such as Blériot nearing success, the entry into competitive aviation of a brilliant designer such as Curtiss did not bode well for the Wrights’ long-term preeminence.*2 Unless, of course, they could successfully make everyone else pay them for the privilege of being in the business.

  * * *

  *1 The word literally means “fin” or in some translations, “little wing.”

  *2 The May 1908 edition of Aeronautics featured a full-page advertisement of a man carrying an eight-cylinder, 120-horsepower Antoinette motor on his shoulder.

  Vindication

  For this trip to Kitty Hawk, the Wrights were not alone.

  After years of disdaining public media, Wilbur and Orville had finally learned that perception could not be ignored. They allowed, even encouraged, a number of reporters to follow them to the Outer Banks and report on their progress. Then they penned a long article for the June 1908 edition of Aeronautics in which they gave details of both the refinements to their machi
ne and the results of each test. That article was followed by another written by Byron Newton, a reporter for The New York Herald, one of the journalists who had witnessed the Kitty Hawk tests, who extolled in a long, laudatory piece, “I did not believe they had made conspicuous progress in sustained flight and I did not believe they had made a record of twenty-four miles as claimed by them. I believe all these things now and more.”

  The Wrights might have continued to be doubted by some in Europe, but in America they were approaching celebrity status and their upcoming flights at Fort Myer were as eagerly awaited as a visit by President Roosevelt.

  But the Wright brothers’ achievements were not the only ones that received coverage in the June Aeronautics. Following Newton’s piece was another, copiously illustrated with photographs, “The Work of the Aerial Experiment Association.” It appeared over Alexander Graham Bell’s byline but was actually culled from Associated Press dispatches and submitted by Glenn Curtiss. Curtiss’s flight of 1,017 feet was billed, correctly, as “the longest ever made in a heavier-than-air machine by an aviator on his first trial.” No immediate threat to twenty-four miles perhaps, but a thrown gauntlet all the same. The article contained a lengthy description of the lightweight Curtiss V-8 motor used on both of the AEA’s models. It should have been clear to Wilbur and Orville that Curtiss was building power plants far superior to anything they could produce. They had already contracted to have motors on their French machines supplied by an outside firm. Had they made the same arrangement domestically with Curtiss, the course of world aviation would have been altered.

  There were two other articles of interest in that issue of Aeronautics. The first was a short item that noted, “Work is progressing on the aeroplane A. M. Herring is building under contract for the U. S. Army Signal Corps.… Details of the machine are being kept secret to a great extent, but we have reason to believe that it will be of the Herring–Chanute bi-plane type … the two engines have been specially designed by Mr. Herring … with a maximum of 17 horsepower for each.” Wilbur said of this, “It is my opinion he will never go to Washington.”1

  The second was a long feature on Thomas Baldwin. Despite the rush of interest in fixed-wing flight, dirigibles continued to be seen by many, both in the military and among the civilian population, as the true future of aviation. Baldwin would also be at Fort Myer as part of his deal with the Signal Corps and balloons had already begun to be tested in scouting missions by other nations.

  Dirigibles remained a public phenomenon and air shows featuring the gas bags continued to draw large crowds. Ballooning therefore attracted any number of young, aggressive aeronauts, drawn to adventure, danger, and fame. Other than Beachey, the most notable of these was Charles Keeney Hamilton, a tiny, wiry daredevil with a wild shock of red hair who always seemed to have in his mouth either a drink or a cigarette, sometimes both. Dirigibles might have seemed like a nearly obsolete technology by the more forward-looking, but in May 1908 they were a training ground for the aviators who would help shape the futures of the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss.

  By the time the articles appeared, Wilbur was across the Atlantic. Before he left, he visited Flint & Company offices in New York, and after that meeting he gave Orville two pieces of disquieting news. The first was that “our French business is not in very good shape,” owing to the withdrawal of one of their French partners. “It is evident we will have a hard pull over there but I think things will go better with someone to steady Berg.” The cause of the trouble was the “excitement over recent flights by Farman & Delagrange.”* The second was even more ominous. “One of the clippings which I enclose intimates that Selfridge is infringing our patent on wing twisting. It is important to get the main features originated by us identified in the public mind with our machines before they are described in connection with some other machine.” Whether Wilbur’s choice of words was significant can only be surmised, but neither he nor Orville would use the narrow phrase “wing twisting” again when referring to their patent but rather the more inclusive “lateral margins,” or “lateral balance.”

  When Wilbur arrived in France on May 28, the crated Flyer that Orville had sent the previous summer was waiting for him. When he opened the crates three weeks later, he had an unpleasant surprise. He immediately turned on his brother. “I … have been puzzled to know how you could have wasted two full days packing [the crates]. 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.… Ten or a dozen ribs were broken and as they are scattered here and there through the surfaces it takes almost as much time to tear down and rebuild as if we had begun at the beginning.” The damage was pervasive to almost every piece of the construction: fabric, coil, radiator, magneto, and axle. Fasteners were missing entirely. For the next two days, Wilbur complained in his diary of working morning until night fixing the mess Orville had made of things.

  The only problem, as Orville later pointed out, was that when they had arrived in France, the crates had been packed perfectly with not one piece broken or missing. The crates had been opened at the customs house in Le Havre, the contents examined and then replaced by gorilla-pawed customs officials in the jumble Wilbur found them. After Wilbur’s error was pointed out to him, he made no further mention of the incident, but did not apologize and continued to bark orders in letters to the brother he had described to his sister as “not as careful” as he was.

  Wilbur’s abuse became so incessant and harsh that finally Katharine wrote back to him, “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.”2 After he received the letter, Wilbur backed off.

  At Hammondsport, Curtiss had designed the third of AEA’s aircraft, which Bell dubbed June Bug. This version was almost identical to White Wing except for a box tail instead of pane rudder, stronger bracing, and varnished muslin on the wings instead of silk. The major difference was human, not mechanical; Curtiss showed that he would be as adept a pilot in the air as he had been on the ground. With a deft touch on the shoulder harness that controlled the ailerons, Curtiss coaxed longer and longer flights out of June Bug and early in July decided to try for the first publicly offered prize for fixed-wing aviation in the United States.

  Scientific American, by this time Wright enthusiasts, had decided to offer a trophy to commemorate powered flight. The statuette was an elaborate affair, silver over an onyx base, featuring an eagle with flared wings sitting atop a globe that was suspended in clouds at the head of a pillar, flanked by three winged horses on each side. North and South America appeared on the rear surface of the globe; on the front, incongruously, was the image of Langley’s aerodrome.

  Curtiss at the wheel of June Bug.

  To win permanent possession of the trophy, an aviator—or two brothers—would have to win a competition three times in three separate years, with each test devised to test the limits of aviation for that year. The 1908 prize would go to the first airplane that completed a straight one-kilometer flight. An added stipulation was that the aircraft had to take off under its own power, which meant wheels instead of a derrick and track. The Wrights, unwilling to refit the Flyer for wheels, refused to enter and so Curtiss had the field to himself. On July 4, 1908, he flew 5,360 feet (1.634 kilometers), witnessed by a slew of dignitaries and Aero Club members, including Charles Manly. Another interested spectator was Augustus Herring, who had taken to popping up whenever something of importance was going on. On a subsequent flight, Curtiss tried to maneuver in the air, but the tiny ailerons at the ends of the wings were not sufficient to effect turns.

  June Bug was too much for the Wrights. Orville, who had previously reacted to a rumor that the AEA intended to sell the Red Wing for $5,000 by declaring, “What cheek!” and “Some nerve!” notified Curtiss that he was infringing their patents, in language that would indicate O
rville had consulted Toulmin, although no actual written communication exists. “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.” Orville then referred to the Wright patent, assured Curtiss that they had not given permission for use of any proprietary features “for exhibitions or in a commercial way,” and then asserted that “Claim 14 of our patent No. 821,393 specifically covers the combination which we are informed you are using.”3 In furtherance of their aspirations to monopoly, Orville added, “We believe it will be very difficult to develop a successful machine without the use of some of the features covered in our patent.” He then offered to discuss a licensing arrangement with Curtiss.

  Curtiss’s reply was somewhere between an evasion and an outright lie. Rather than address what he saw as the differences between the Wright patent and his arrangement, he simply assured Orville that “contrary to newspaper reports, I do not expect to do anything in the way of exhibitions,” that his flights were simply part of the AEA’s work and that he referred the “matter of patents to the secretary of the organization,” who happened to be Thomas Selfridge. Selfridge had earlier written to the Wrights asking for advice and been referred to the patent.