Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Curtiss ironically was now fighting on both sides of the street. In another letter to the Wrights, Knabenshue recounted a conversation at North Island. “The funny part of the whole affair is that he has secured a patent and is very much upset on account of the many infringers who insist on copying his machine and using his principle.” An announcement in Aeronautics stated, “Mr. Curtiss wishes to inform the public that he is not acquiescent in the general use of his inventions upon patents that will eventually issue.” Curtiss made some effort to enforce his patents but did not have any more success than Wilbur and Orville.

  By the end of 1911, Wilbur’s frustration had begun to gnaw at his health. He had by his own admission worked harder and for longer hours pursuing the case against Glenn Curtiss than he had developing the Wright Flyer. He drove himself to exhaustion traveling around the country, meeting with lawyers and giving depositions, and grew so thin as to appear cadaverous. Family members began to express concern about the crushing pace he insisted on maintaining.

  In January 1912, Wilbur wrote a singular letter to the Hungarian anthropologist Guillaume de Hevésy.6 “During the past three months, most of my time has been taken up with lawsuits,” he began. After expressing a hope that he could be “freed from this kind of work,” and that it was “more pleasant to go to Kitty Hawk for experiments than to worry over lawsuits,” Wilbur told Hevésy that he’d “hoped in 1906 to sell our invention to governments for enough money to satisfy our needs and then devote our time to science, but the jealousy of certain persons blocked this plan and compelled us to rely on our patents and commercial exploitation.” Then Wilbur made an extraordinary assertion. “When we think what we might have accomplished if we had been able to devote [the past five years] to experiments, we feel very sad.”7

  There is little question that the patent wars were devastating American aviation. By January 1912, France boasted 800 aviators a day making flights to only 90 in the United States.8 As early as July 1911, Aeronautics ran an editorial whose opening line read, “What is the matter with aviation in America?” The journal lamented that “in three short years” after the “epoch-making flights of the Wright brothers in France and at Fort Myer [that] electrified the world,” America had “changed places from the head to the foot of the procession.” The magazine blamed a combination of a fear of innovation, an unwillingness to spend money, and a desire by the government to sit on the sidelines and wait to see what Europe came up with. Nowhere did the editorial mention that America’s two greatest designers were either spending a good part of their time (Curtiss) or all of their time (Wilbur Wright) trying to best each other in the courtroom.

  And for the Wrights, the litigation went well beyond Glenn Curtiss. Two weeks before his letter to Guillaume de Hevésy, Wilbur had been in New York, testifying in the refiled lawsuit to try to pry out of the Aero Club the $15,000 the Wrights had decided they had been shortchanged at Belmont, an action that his attorney in the matter observed involved “a considerable loss of time.”9 Then there were the actions against Paulhan, Sopwith, Grahame-White, and the Chicago organizers; the threatened actions against Brookins; and countless others. Five days before Wilbur testified in New York in the Aero Club case, he and Orville were required to give depositions in one of a number of cases in which the Wrights were defendants.*8 The array of legal actions to be tracked and overseen would have taxed an entire law firm but Wilbur insisted on going it essentially alone. He did take time out from the legal wrangling to announce the new automatic stabilizing device, an invention that the newspapers then credited to him and not Orville.

  At the end of January, Wilbur conferred with signal corps officers at Augusta, Georgia, and then returned to Dayton, supposedly to help craft a higher-powered, six-cylinder engine that would allow a military aircraft to carry two men, a wireless, and “measuring equipment” for reconnaissance flights. But within a week he was back in New York, attending the annual Aero Club dinner at the request of the club’s new president, Wright Company board member Robert Collier. In addition to trying to get the $15,000, the Wrights had been engaged in an ongoing battle with the club about licensing at air meets, especially another Chicago meet scheduled for that August, but Collier persuaded Wilbur that the dinner was the perfect place to lobby the guest of honor, President William Howard Taft, for higher appropriations for aviation. The event would also be the venue at which the first annual Aero Club award for the most important advancement in aviation of the previous year was presented.*9 Wilbur, who would have had every reason to believe that Collier, a close friend, had urged him to come to surprise him with the honor, sat stoically near President Taft at the head table as the winner was announced.

  It was Glenn H. Curtiss for the hydroplane. The only small consolation for Wilbur was that Curtiss was in California and not present to accept in person. By January 31, Wilbur was back in Dayton.

  Orville had been working feverishly to catch up to Curtiss in hydroplane development but was finding the design parameters more difficult than he had anticipated. On January 8, 1912, he wrote to Russell Alger that the wooden models he had built carried too much weight, which he attributed to the white lead paint they had used.*10 Alger, who had to some degree replaced Wilbur as a design partner, replied that “aluminum pontoons are the thing” because “while they bend and sometimes break the frames inside, they don’t leak.” Although by early February, Frank Coffyn would have great success flying a Wright hydroplane around New York City, Curtiss by then had already improved his original design and Coffyn’s performance was not sufficient to draw the navy away from its commitment to the Triad and the Flying Fish.

  For virtually the entire month of February and well into March, Wilbur and Orville gave testimony in the Herring–Curtiss suit but were at least allowed to do so in Dayton. Orville wrote to Russell Alger on March 12 that “the prospects of victory look very good to us, but of course law is a rather uncertain thing.” In the midst of his testimony, the Wrights learned that their German patent had been nullified on the grounds that the processes for which the patent was sought had already been made public. The court based its decision on a speech by Octave Chanute and Wilbur’s article in the Western Society of Engineers journal.

  The battle with the Aero Club went on. The Wrights were convinced that other than Collier, the members of the club’s board were their enemies. Orville wrote to Alger at the end of March after Wilbur failed to exact licensing concessions during extensive meetings in New York. “The Aero Club of America from the beginning has done everything it could to our injury,” and other than Collier, “the rest of them … have done all the damage they could in the past three or four years, and now when they find that we have the upper hand, they are eager to make some contract to do away with what advantages we now have.”10

  Alger, unaccustomed to the Wrights’ vitriol and convictions of persecution, was taken aback. “Do you not think that possibly you exaggerate a little the Aero Club’s attitude to you?” he wrote back. “I don’t think they have been by any means altogether wise in their manner of negotiating, but at the same time I do think that they are not necessarily out to intentionally injure you in any way.” Alger pointed out that the club had agreed to put 30 percent of all prize money claimed at unlicensed meets in escrow to be paid to the Wrights if they won their lawsuit. He also mentioned that he would like to purchase the new Wright six-cylinder Model C when it was completed and asked for a price. Orville offered the machine at the standard 10 percent discount for directors, to which Alger replied, “I think if the other Directors are entitled to 10% I ought to be entitled to more, as certainly I have done what I could personally for the company.” Orville did not reply.

  The Model C was completed in April and delivered in May. In addition to the larger motor, the C featured a number of new features that met the army’s specifications that it carry two people with the largest possible field of observation for both, allow the controls to be used by either operator from either seat, asce
nd two thousand feet in ten minutes with a 450-pound load plus fuel, stay airborne for four hours, have an independent starting and landing system, travel at forty-five miles per hour, and land in a plowed field. The only feature lacking was the automatic stabilizer. It was not in the specifications but, seeing that it had been announced publicly, the army had asked if it might be included. Orville replied that the system would not be completed in time for the official performance tests, which were scheduled for late May at the army’s training center in College Park, Maryland. The Wrights assigned Art Welsh to fly the plane for the tests and the army assigned a talented young flyer, Lieutenant Leighton Hazelhurst.

  With Wright v. Herring–Curtiss still undecided, Wilbur penned what amounted to editorials defending the Wrights’ position, the same as he had done in defending his father. Called “What Mouillard Did” and “What Clément Ader Did,” referring to a French aviation pioneer who had been credited with achieving heavier-than-air flight, Wilbur’s writings demonstrated why neither of these men had precursed his discovery of wing warping or the attainment of powered flight.

  At the beginning of April, Wilbur wrote to one of his lawyers to excuse himself for overlooking a bill; he had been so busy with lawsuits that his desk hadn’t been cleaned in two months. By mid-month, he was back in New York, negotiating with the Aero Club. With the Wright Exhibition Team no longer flying, the only sources of exhibition revenue for the Wright Company were either a piece of the prize money or licensing fees for allowing a meet to take place. Wilbur wanted both. The Aero Club remained willing to set money aside and in some cases pay the Wrights some monies in advance, but balked at the 20 or 30 percent that Wilbur was demanding. But in his letter to Orville dated April 24, 1912, he said he hoped “to get a definite settlement of Aero Club license today.”

  He did not, however, and two days later Wilbur left for Boston. Whether or not he ate tainted clam broth or was exposed in some other manner, by the time he returned to Dayton, he was feeling ill. No one in the family took much notice at first but Wilbur developed a fever and on May 2, D. B. Conklin, a Wright family physician, diagnosed Wilbur as having typhoid fever.11 The next day, his fever became worse but Milton wrote, “Nothing else ailed him. He suffered nothing.”

  Wilbur Wright wrote his final letter on May 4, 1912, not to a loved one, a friend, or a fellow aviator, but rather to Frederick W. Fish, an attorney on the patent case. In it, Wilbur excoriated Fish for a letter he had written to Harry Toulmin proposing an adjournment until autumn. “I fear Mr. Toulmin has not made it plain to you why it is so important that the case should be heard this spring. He looks at the matter from a lawyer’s point of view while I am compelled to consider our lawsuit as a feature of our general business.”

  Wilbur then issued a sad valedictory. “Unnecessary delays by stipulation of counsel have already destroyed fully three fourths of the value of our patent. The opportunities of the last two years will not return again. At the present moment almost innumerable competitors are entering the field, and for the first time are producing machines that will really fly. These machines are being put on the market at one half less than the price which we have been selling our machines for.” Toulmin seemed to have become a particular source of Wilbur’s irritation. “Owing to some unfortunate features in the statement of the claims of the patent, if there is much further delay, means will be found of evading these claims, so that even a decision in our favor might not give us a monopoly.… Under these conditions, I told Mr. Toulmin more than a year ago that under no conditions would I consent to further delays by stipulation of counsel and that all applications for delay must be passed on by the Court itself.” If the letter was answered, the reply has been lost.

  For the next week, Wilbur’s condition was little changed. On some days he would be marginally better, on others marginally worse. During this period, his illness was considered by his doctors to be serious but not necessarily a threat to his life.

  But typhoid had claimed many lives and a victim might well know the end was coming before family or doctors. On May 10, Wilbur summoned his personal lawyer to take instructions for his will. He left $1,000 to his father, $50,000 each to Reuchlin, Lorin, and Katharine, and the remainder, approximately $126,000, to Orville. He made no specific bequests to charity but Milton said later that that was because he trusted Orville to do what he would have wished without being told.

  Six days later, when Wilbur’s illness continued to linger but not worsen, Orville left for College Park to deliver the Wright C for the army tests. On May 18, Art Welsh took the airplane up for the first time in an unofficial trial. He reported in his log, “Climbed one thousand feet with passenger in the four minutes before engine stopped.” Welsh continued flying the machine for the next two weeks, coaxing improved performance out of it as he became more experienced.

  Orville had told Katharine to keep him informed and at 2 A.M. on May 17, she telegraphed that while Wilbur was “slightly more delirious” and his “general condition unimproved,” Orville should “pay no attention to any of the alarming reports that may be sent out.” She then wished him well on the trials and closed that the doctor was “splendid.” But the next morning, she telegraphed again to suggest that while “nothing [was] immediately alarming,” Orville should make plans to return home. That same day, Wilbur was put on opiates and spent most of his time only vaguely conscious. Orville returned to Dayton on May 20 to find his brother unaware of his presence. On May 22, a specialist from Cincinnati arrived and Wilbur rallied slightly. On May 24, Milton pronounced him “in nearly every respect better.” His improvement continued such that two days later, Orville was able to take a niece for an outing to Miami City. But that night, Sunday, May 26, Wilbur began his final slide. By Tuesday, the doctors had given up hope and at 3:15 A.M. on May 30, 1912, one of the most important and iconic figures in American history died peacefully in his bed, with his father, brothers, and sister by his side.

  Orville leading the funeral procession for his brother.

  Milton wrote in his diary, “A short life, full of consequences. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadily, he lived and died.” Wilbur Wright was a complex man, flawed to be sure, but Milton’s assessment did not contain one word that wasn’t true.

  * * *

  *1 The monoplane was clearly the future and few designers bothered with two-surface technology. Of those pusher biplanes that were produced, most were “headless.”

  *2 “EX” stood for “exhibition” and its design was derived from the Wright R, the “Baby Grand” that Walter Brookins had failed to race at Belmont.

  *3 “Tastes like a cross between sludge and horse slop,” one reviewer noted. The formula was evidently improved later.

  *4 “He is accompanying Rodgers to the coast!” he wrote to Wilbur on September 22.

  *5 The ailerons, as can be readily discerned from the many photographs and schematics of the craft, were flat and not arched.

  *6 The navy had assigned Lieutenant John Rodgers, Calbraith Rodgers’s brother, to the Wrights for training as well, but Rodgers spent most of his time learning on the Flyer, not on hydroplanes.

  *7 Knabenshue was by then running his own promotion company but still managing Parmalee and Turpin and using Wright airplanes under license.

  *8 These generally involved other inventors who believed that the Wrights had appropriated their ideas. All were frivolous and none resulted in anything but total victory for the Wrights.

  *9 The award was later christened the Collier trophy, which still exists. It is now given annually by the National Aeronautic Association, presented to those who have made “the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.”

  *10 Orville also informed Alger t
hat the Wrights “had decided to give a 75% discount from the daily royalties on the machines used for exhibition purposes until we are able to secure an adjudication of the patent, that will enable us to enjoin infringers.”

  The Romance of Death

  Where Wilbur Wright had died in bed, many others in aviation did not.

  One of Curtiss’s strongest selling points, as the National Aviation Company noted in their ad, was that “the Curtiss machine is without a blot on its record. It has never had a serious accident.” That changed on September 1, 1911.

  John J. Frisbie had been one of the original members of the Moisant flying circus, the other American besides Hamilton to go on tour. At forty-six, Frisbie was the oldest of the Moisant aviators by a good twenty years and just about the oldest exhibition flyer in general. He had enjoyed solid if unspectacular success and been one of the Moisant aviators in Chicago, where he had earned a solid if unspectacular $2,000. Unique on the team, he flew not a Moisant machine but rather a Curtiss 50-horsepower biplane.

  After Chicago, unbeknownst to Alfred, Frisbie had booked himself a series of one-man shows, the first of which was a county fair in Norton, Kansas. Frisbie flew for three days with no incident but on the fourth, his engine stalled forty feet off the ground and the biplane fell to the earth. The crash was minor, as were Frisbie’s injuries, but no experienced mechanic was present to check the airplane out so Frisbie decided not to take to the air for his scheduled second flight. “The spectators hooted and shouted ‘fakir’ and refused to listen to explanations. Frisbie announced that rather than have the big crowd go away with the impression that he was not willing to do his best, he would attempt a flight.”1