Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Weber’s construct inspired immense controversy when it was published and continues to do so today but Protestant Ethic has nonetheless been as influential as anything ever written in the social sciences short of Marx’s Kapital and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

  While Protestant capitalists did not go about waving copies of Weber’s essay in the pursuit of wealth—it wasn’t even translated into English until 1930—the essential argument does seem suited to the Wrights, particularly Wilbur, who brought an ecclesiastical view of human affairs to his forays into both science and business. It was an ethos ideally suited to the former and stunningly unsuited to the latter, and explains Wilbur’s rigidity and his strict delineations between good and evil. That Wilbur believed he was doing God’s work and toiling for the betterment of humanity by pursuing monopoly wealth seems congruent to both his public behavior and his private correspondence, particularly his insistence that he had little use for personal gain.

  Whatever the explanation, the demons that caused Wilbur Wright to abandon science, to eschew innovation, to embark on a hopeless crusade to vanquish foes both real and imagined, robbed him of decades of his life and America and the world of one of its exceptional intellects. That the tragedy of Wilbur’s fall was self-generated makes the irony only that much more cruel.

  * * *

  *1 During the war the Flyer was stored in a secret underground vault outside London along with many treasures of the British Empire.

  *2 Curtiss-Wright remains in business and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

  For Nancy and Emily

  All letters except those noted are from the Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

  Abbreviations are as follows:

  Aeronautics—Aeronautics Magazine

  AF—Andrew Freedman

  Aircraft—Aircraft Magazine

  GHC—Glenn Hammond Curtiss

  HAT—Harry A. Toulmin

  KW—Katharine Wright

  MW—Milton Wright

  NYT—New York Times

  OC—Octave Chanute

  OW—Orville Wright

  WW—Wilbur Wright

  CHAPTER 1. FULCRUM

  1. Quoted in John D. Anderson, Jr., A History of Aerodynamics and Its Impact on Flying Machines (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 6.

  2. Chanute’s biography is taken from a memorial article in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 74 (December 1911), pp. 483–89.

  3. Mouillard to Chanute, January 5, 1896, http://​invention.​psychology.​msstate.​edu/​inventors/​i/​Chanute/​library/​Chanute_​Mouillard/​Chanute-​Mouillard.​html.

  CHAPTER 2. HIGHWAY IN THE SKY

  1. The most complete treatment of Herring’s early life and his role in aeronautics before 1900 is in Tom D. Crouch, A Dream of Wings (New York: Norton, 1981).

  2. Quoted in ibid., p. 147.

  3. Chicago Daily Tribune, May 13, 1896, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 3. MEN IN THE DUNES

  1. Chanute, “Experiments in flying,” McClure’s Magazine, June 15, 1900, pp. 127–33.

  2. Chanute, “Recent ‘Experiments in Gliding Flight,’ ” Aeronautical Annual 3 (1897), p. 49.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Crouch, Dream, p. 199.

  5. Boston Daily Globe, September 14, 1896, p. 10. The article did, however, refer to him as “F. T. Herring.”

  6. Aeronautical Annual 3 (1897), p. 53.

  7. Crouch, Dream, p. 205.

  8. Chicago Times-Herald, September 8, 1897, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 4. TO KITTY HAWK

  1. WW to Smithsonian Institution, May 30, 1899.

  2. The most comprehensive treatment of the schism, and indeed of all of Wilbur and Orville’s early life, is provided by Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys (New York: Norton, 1989).

  3. Crouch, Bishop, pp. 60, 62.

  4. Ibid., pp. 81, 86.

  5. Ibid., p. 92.

  6. Aeronautical Annual 2 (1896), pp. 23–25.

  7. WW to OC, May 13, 1900.

  8. Crouch, Bishop, p. 182.

  9. OW to KW, September 26, 1900.

  10. OC to WW, November 29, 1900.

  CHAPTER 5. SOPHOMORE SLUMP

  1. Journal of the Western Society of Engineers 2 (1897), p. 27.

  2. OW to KW, July 28, 1901. Space constraints prevent the ten-page letter from being reprinted here, but Orville’s account of the mosquito wars is hilarious and should be read in its entirety.

  3. OW to WW, August 6, 1902.

  4. Quoted in Rena Faye Subotnik and Herbert J. Walberg, The Scientific Basis of Education Productivity (Washington, D.C.: Information Age, 2006), p. 41.

  5. Crouch, Bishop, p. 238.

  CHAPTER 6. GAS BAG

  1. National Magazine 28 (July 1908), pp. 457–60. This article, written by Thomas F. Baldwin [sic], contains Baldwin’s usual combination of fact, hyperbole, and outright fantasy. With all the bluster, however, Baldwin’s documented record of innovation and achievement is undeniable and guarantees him the place in aviation history he would have claimed for himself.

  2. Gary F. Kurtz, “ ‘Navigating the Upper Strata’ and the Quest for Dirigibility,” California History 58, No. 4 (Winter 1979/1980), pp. 334–47.

  3. Aircraft, March 1910, p. 23.

  4. The Curtiss Aviation Book (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912), p. 29. The book was ghostwritten for Curtiss by Augustus Post, who also included some sections under his own name. As with most of the accounts of the period, liberties were often taken with specifics but the basic facts seemed generally accurate.

  5. C. R. Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 12.

  6. Curtiss Aviation Book, pp. 19–20.

  7. WW to OC, January 19, 1902.

  8. Roy Knabenshue, “Chauffeur of the Skies,” quoted in Robert Hedin, The Zeppelin Reader (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998), p. 23.

  9. Albuquerque Evening Citizen, August 23, 1905, p. 6.

  10. Roseberry, Curtiss, p. 44.

  11. Los Angeles Herald, September 27, 1905, p. 1.

  12. NYT, September 24, 1906, p. 12.

  13. NYT, June 26, 1907, p. 6.

  CHAPTER 7. WHERE NO MAN HAD GONE BEFORE

  1. Although Thomas Baldwin also realized that an airship propeller would need a different configuration from that of a ship, he thought air and water had essentially the same properties. And Baldwin never went through anything like the rigorous process to find the optimum specifications that the Wrights undertook.

  2. WW to OC, June 6, 1901.

  3. Italics added in both quotes. The dispute was never resolved, eventually precipitating anger and wounded feelings on both sides. In any event, this exchange can be seen as the beginning of the change in the relationship between the two men.

  4. NYT, October 8, 1903, p. 1.

  5. NYT, October 9, 1903, p. 16.

  6. Washington Times, October 8, 1903, p. 2. Washington, D.C., newspapers were generally kinder, running the story off the front page.

  7. NYT, December 9, 1903, p. 1.

  8. Quoted in Crouch, Dream, p. 292.

  CHAPTER 8. PATENT PIONEERING

  1. Wilbur’s statement: “On the morning of December 17, between 10:30 and noon, four flights were made, two by Orville Wright and two by Wilbur Wright. The starts were all made from a point on the level near our camp in Dare County, North Carolina. The wind at the time of the flights had a velocity of twenty-seven miles an hour. The flight was made directly against the wind. Each time the machine started from the level ground by its own power, with no assistance from gravity or other sources whatever. After a run of about eight inches on the ground it arose from the track, and under the direction of the operator climbed upward on an inclined course till a height eight or ten feet from the ground was reached, after which the course was kept as near horizontal as the wind gusts and the limited skill of the operator would permit. The flyer made
its way forward with a speed of ten miles an hour over the ground and of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour through the air. The flight was short. The succeeding flights rapidly increased in length, and at the fourth trial a flight of fifty-nine seconds was made, in which the machine flew a little more than a half mile through the air and a distance of more than 852 feet over the ground. All of the experiments have been conducted at our own expense, without assistance from any individual or institution.”

  2. WW to OC, January 4, 1904.

  3. Wilbur was later quite open about seeking a monopoly on flying machines. It has been suggested that it was Herring’s letter that prompted Wilbur and Orville to file for a patent, but Herring’s proposal only reinforced their thinking. In another indication that the Wrights’ commercial intentions predated Herring’s “offer,” the day before the letter was posted, The New York Times reported offhandedly that “[t]he inventors of the airship which is said to have made several successful flights in North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, are anxious to sell the use of their device to the government.” The Times cited no source and surely there was a good deal of misleading, exaggerated, and even ludicrous reporting in the weeks after Wilbur and Orville took flight. Still, this item is sufficiently congruent with later events to be persuasive.

  4. HAT to WW, January 19, 1904.

  5. Toulmin’s precise phrasing: “We wish it to be understood, however, that our invention is not limited to this particular construction, since any construction whereby the angular relations of the lateral margins of the aeroplanes may be varied in opposite directions with respect to the normal planes of said aeroplanes comes within the scope of our invention.… Moreover, although we prefer to so construct the apparatus that the movements of the lateral margins on the opposite sides of the machine are equal in extent and opposite in direction, yet our invention is not limited to a construction producing this result, since it may be desirable under certain circumstances to move the lateral margins on one side of the machine in the manner just described without moving the lateral margins on the other side of the machine to an equal extent in the opposite direction.”

  6. OC to Patrick Alexander, January 18, 1904; OC to WW, January 20, 1904.

  7. OC to WW, January 14, 1904.

  8. WW to OC, January 18, 1904.

  CHAPTER 9. THE VAGARIES OF THE MARKETPLACE

  1. Foster to OW, November 22, 1905.

  CHAPTER 10. THE INEXORABLE PROGRESSION OF KNOWLEDGE

  1. GHC to OW and WW, June 22, 1906.

  2. National Magazine 28 (July 1908), p. 462.

  CHAPTER 12. LANGLEY’S LEGACY

  1. National Geographic 14, No. 6 (June 1903).

  2. WW to OW, July 2, 1907.

  3. WW to OC, July 21, 1907.

  4. OW to WW, July 11, 1907. At this point, Flint and the Wrights had yet to formalize an agreement.

  5. WW to OW, August 9, 1907.

  CHAPTER 13. CLOSING FAST

  1. The Bells had two daughters. Mabel Bell had also given birth to two boys, neither of whom survived his first year.

  2. One of those accounts was a deposition Curtiss later gave in his patent infringement suit with the Wrights. While his veracity might be questioned in a document in which he was defending himself, the Wrights also seemed to accept that ailerons were Bell’s idea.

  3. Santos-Dumont and a glider designer, Robert Esnault-Peletrie, had both used similar devices.

  CHAPTER 14. VINDICATION

  1. Marvin W. McFarland, ed., The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 883.

  2. KW to WW, July 2, 1908.

  3. Claim 14 reads, “A flying-machine comprising superposed connected aeroplanes, means for moving the opposite lateral portions of said aeroplanes to different angles to the normal planes thereof, a vertical rudder, means for moving said vertical rudder toward that side of the machine presenting the smaller angle of incidence and the least resistance to the atmosphere, and a horizontal rudder provided with means for presenting its upper or under surface to the resistance of the atmosphere, substantially as described.” But Orville, in a letter to Wilbur, later expressed concern that the wording of Claim 14 did not cover Curtiss’s aircraft.

  CHAPTER 15. ORVILLE AND SELFRIDGE

  1. The other two were Benjamin Foulois and Frank Lahm, both of whom would eventually retire from the Army Air Corps as generals.

  2. AEA Bulletins, from October 5, 1908, to December 28, 1908.

  3. Bell to McCurdy, October 22, 1908.

  4. Boston Daily Globe, September 18, 1908, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 16. THE TOAST OF FRANCE

  1. WW to OW, October 18, 1908.

  2. Roseberry, Curtiss, p. 152.

  3. Ibid., pp. 157, 238.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Crouch, Bishop, p. 387.

  6. Aeronautics, July 1909, p. 13.

  CHAPTER 17. TRADING PUNCHES

  1. WW to MW, January 1, 1909.

  2. Hartford Courant, July 26, 1909, p. 1.

  3. Boston Daily Globe, July 26, 1909, p. 1.

  4. Crouch, Bishop, p. 399.

  5. Boston Daily Globe, July 27, 1909, p. 3.

  6. OW to WW, August 19, 1909.

  7. Curtiss Aviation Book, p. 65.

  8. Ibid., pp. 65–66.

  9. NYT, August 23, 1909, p. 1.

  10. NYT, August 29, 1909, p. 2.

  11. The speed of Curtiss’s flight remained imprecise, ranging between 45.73 and 47.06 miles per hour, depending on which of the “official” times one accepted. In any case, it remained short of Orville’s 47.4 miles per hour at Fort Myer.

  12. OW to WW, September 2, 1909.

  13. OW to WW, September 28, 1909.

  14. WW to OW, August 21, 1909.

  15. Boston Daily Globe, September 23, 1909, p. 11. The nature of the “information” was never revealed. Given Wilbur’s acerbic wit, he might well have been referring to the 1906 meeting on which he had largely based his infringement suit.

  16. Ibid., p. 12.

  17. Grover C. Loening, Our Wings Grow Faster (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Doran, 1935), p. 43.

  18. Ibid., p. 7.

  19. Ibid., p. 11.

  20. Roseberry, Curtiss, p. 218.

  21. Boston Daily Globe, October 5, 1909, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 18. BEST-LAID PLANS

  1. Los Angeles Herald, November 8, 1909, p. 1.

  2. Los Angeles Herald, December 1, 1909, p. 1.

  3. Aeronautics, February 1910, pp. 18–19.

  4. HAT to WW and OW, January 5, 1910.

  5. Herbert A. Johnson, “The Wright Patent Wars and Early American Aviation,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce (Winter 2004).

  6. New-York Tribune, June 1, 1900, pp. 1–2, emphasis added. The yacht, the Enquirer, valued at $25,000, was sold to the government for $80,000.

  7. Ibid., May 17, 1900.

  8. Strictly speaking, Hazel was ruling on a demurrer filed by the defendants seeking dismissal of the suit—in essence, an appeal. Hazel was concurring with another judge. The principle, however, stands regardless and Hazel would demonstrate his point of view in subsequent cases.

  9. NYT, September 16, 1909, p. 1.

  10. To label the legal strategy that of Wilbur and Orville alone would be a mistake. While they had significant input into what the lawyers did and there is every indication they approved of what would soon be seen as a ham-fisted, public-be-damned approach to protecting their patents, the lawyers were now representing a good deal more than the interests of the inventors.

  11. NYT, January 6, 1910, p. 4.

  12. Ibid.

  13. NYT, January 19, 1910, p. 1.

  14. NYT, January 11, 1910, p. 1.

  15. Boston Daily Globe, January 11, 1910, p. 5.

  16. Aeronautics, March 1910, p. 80.

  17. NYT, January 21, 1910, p. 1.

  18. San Francisco Call, January 22, 1910, p. 10.

  CHAPTER 19. BOWING TO THE INEVITABLE

  1. AF to WW, January 28, 1910.
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  2. WW to OC, January 3, 1910. He had written, “Your letter of the 23rd December was received, and we were all glad to know that you were well. We, that is Orville and I, are expecting to be present at the dinner in your honor at Boston on the 12th where naturally we will have the pleasure of meeting you.”

  3. WW to OC, January 20, 1910.

  4. OC to WW, January 23, 1910.

  5. WW to OC, April 28, 1910.

  6. Salt Lake Herald, February 1, 1910, p. 1.

  7. NYT, March 4, 1910, p. 4.

  8. Aeronautics, March 1910, p. 90.

  9. Boston Daily Globe, March 15, 1910, p. 1.

  10. NYT, April 12, 1910, p. 6.

  11. Boston Daily Globe, March 13, 1910, p. 1.

  12. Andrew Freedman had negotiated the arrangement with Philip Dodge, president of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company and on the board of the Aero Club.

  CHAPTER 20. TEAM SPORTS

  1. Curtiss Aviation Book, pp. 90, 93.

  2. Curtiss Aviation Book, pp. 91–92.

  3. NYT, May 30, 1910, p. 1.

  4. Roseberry, Curtiss, p. 275.

  5. Byron Newton to AF, May 29, 1910.