by James Tobin
For permission to examine the minutes of meetings of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, thanks to the Office of the Secretary and Kathy Boi.
Friends and family gave essential help at many moments. In Arlington, Virginia, Jim, Lisa, Paris, and Ben Mitzelfeld shared their home and their enthusiasm. Across the Potomac, Laurie Leitch and Elizabeth McDonnell did the same. David Garrigus, who trod many of the same trails as I for his first-rate film documentary, “Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brothers’ Journey of Invention,” gave tips and leads at many points. Kim Burton helped in so many spare moments that they added up to some very large total. Dr. Thomas Segall and Anne Segall, M.S.W., shared their thoughts about the dynamics of the Wright family. Thanks to all those who participated in the Great but Ultimately Irrelevant Wright Title Survey, and congratulations to Penny Schreiber, the only contestant who nailed it.
I’m deeply grateful to Jamie Evans of Hass/MS&L for volunteering his artistic eye and his scarce time to help conceive and shepherd the illustrative drawings, and to the artists David Messing and David MacArthur for the fine drawings themselves. Thanks, too, to Terry Mahar, for technical wizardry.
One person types the words, but most books grow out of a far more complex process of labor and sacrifice on the part of entire families, and the families need help. Dave and Peggy Farrell offered my family a combination of inspiration, enthusiasm, and concrete aid that adds up to a gift of extraordinary generosity. Liz, Jon, and Peter Jacobs were a constant source of encouragement, ideas, and fun, as were Cathy Angelocci, Karen Holzhausen, Randy and Patti Milgrom, Bob and Sarah Dawson, Doug Evett, John Bebow, Karl Leif Bates, the other members of the Unnamed Group—Richard Campbell, Rob Pasick, John Bacon, Rick Ratliff, David Stringer, and Jerry Burton—Floyd and Elizabeth Erickson; and James and Dorothy Tobin, to whom the book is dedicated.
Claire and Lizzie Tobin tolerated “all Wright brothers, all the time”—even enjoyed it, I think.
I have been very lucky to fall in with a creative, professional, and hardworking production team at the Free Press. Thanks especially to Casey Reivich for her gracious patience and close attention to all-important details; to Tom Lau for a lovely jacket illustration; and to that Free Press associate, Will Nichols, for keeping me on time, or pretty close.
The largest debts come last:
No more hand-wringing, please, about the passing of the great editors. The breed survives in Bruce Nichols. He conceived this book. Then he coached, coaxed, comforted, and cheered. He counseled wisely, waited patiently, insisted politely, edited skillfully, remembered everything important, dispensed with trivia, and never got mad, though he might have.
Carol Mann, likewise, is the sort of agent every author wants. She did the deal with consummate professionalism, then stayed with the process down to the wire, providing good advice, emotional sustenance, and friendship. (And thanks to Christy Fletcher, for good work early on.)
Angels, too, help authors. Janice Harayda was mine.
All of which makes it awfully hard to say anything sensible about the contributions of Leesa Erickson Tobin, who gave all of the above (from skilled research to shrewd advice to angelic gifts) and a great deal more, with a strange and wonderful combination of steely fortitude, hard labor, infinite patience, and tender understanding. Freud said we need love and work. Because of her, I have both.
JAMES TOBIN
Ann Arbor, Michigan
September 20, 2002
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES TOBIN is the author of Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II (Free Press, 1997), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. To Conquer the Air was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for 2000. Tobin is also the author of The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and Great Projects: The Epic Story of the Building of America from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet (Free Press, 2001), a companion book to a PBS documentary series produced by Great Projects Film Company. He took bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in history at the University of Michigan.
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NOTES
Abbreviations
The following initials, acronyms, and abbreviations are used throughout the notes:
Persons:
WW
Wilbur Wright
OW
Orville Wright
MW
Milton Wright
KW
Katharine Wright
SPL
Samuel Pierpont Langley
OC
Octave Chanute
AGB
Alexander Graham Bell
Sources:
FC, WBP, LC
Family Correspondence, Wright Brothers papers, Library of Congress
GC, WBP, LC
General Correspondence, Wright Brothers papers, Library of Congress
SI
Smithsonian Institution
SIA
Smithsonian Institution Archives
NASM
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
WBC, WSU
Wright Brothers Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, Wright State University
Jakab and
Young, eds.,
Published Writings
Peter L. Jakab and Rick Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.)
McFarland, ed.,
Papers
Marvin W. McFarland, editor, The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953.)
Prologue
PAGE
He could take care: Woodland Cemetery visit on 5/30/1899, MW diary entry, 5/30/1899, Bishop Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917 (Dayton, Ohio: Wright State University Libraries, 1999), 506.
“This man is strange and cold”: New York Times, 6/1/1912.
“my imagination pictures things”: WW to KW, 6/08/1907, FC, WBP, LC.
The neighbors included: Heads of households on Wrights’ block of Hawthorn Street, U.S. Sanborn map #42, U.S. Census records, 1900, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
“When I saw this house”: John McMahon, The Wright Brothers: Fathers of Flight (Boston: Little Brown, 1930) 19–20.
At the rear: Remodeling, MW diary entry, 5/22/1899, Diaries, 1857–1917, 505.
Along the front: Design and furnishings of the Wrights’ home, undated typewritten reports, “Wright House” and “The Wright House”; Ivonette Wright Miller to “dear sirs,” 6/25/1977; “Layout of First & Second Floors in the Wright Bros. Home,” Lois Gorrell memo, 7/20/1981, “Notes on back of Registrar’s copy of photo 188:16081”; E. J. Cutler oral history interview, 1/19/56; all in E.I. #186, Greenfield Village Buildings, Wright Home, Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Research Center.
“always the danger”: WW to Lou Wright, 6/18/1901, FC, WBP, LC.
He was “an enthusiast”: WW’s request for information on flight, WW to Smithsonian Institution, 5/30/1899, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 1, 4–5.
A man once wrote: Request for “all Smithsonian publications,” Webster Prentiss True, “The Smithsonian Institution,” Smithsonian Scientific Series, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1929), 156.
“I shall count this day”: quoted in Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), 361.
“A ‘flying-machine,’ so long a type for ridicule”: SPL, “The ‘Flying-Machine,’” McClure’s Magazine, June 1897, 660.
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br /> “the only things of human construction”: Charles M. Manly, Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, pt. 2, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), 128.
“a list of works relating to aerial navigation”: Richard Rathbun to WW, 6/2/1899, GC, WBP, LC.
Chapter One: “The Edge of Wonder”
“reality most like to dreams”: quoted in Laurence Goldstein, The Flying Machine and Modern Literature (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986), 1–2. Goldstein suggests that poets of flight and inventors of flying machines have been motivated by the same “primordial envy” of the birds. He also quotes the anthropologist Mircea Eliade: “The longing to break the ties that hold [man] in bondage to the earth is not a result of cosmic pressures or of economic insecurity—it is constitutive of man, in that he is a being who enjoys a mode of existence unique in the world. Such a desire to free himself from his limitations, which he feels to be a kind of degradation, and to regain spontaneity and freedom . . . must be ranked among the specific marks of man.”
“Like a living thing”: SPL’s account of the flight of No. 5, “The ‘Flying-Machine,’” McClure’s Magazine, June 1897, 658–60.
he remembered a day: SPL’s earliest memories, “Uncompleted Memoirs of S.P. Langley Written at Aiken, South Carolina, From February 8 to 20, 1906,” box 22b, RU 7003, SIA.
“I cannot remember”: George Brown Goode, “The Three Secretaries,” in Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896: The History of Its First Half Century (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1897), 203–04.
But when Langley was finishing: Goode, “The Three Secretaries,” in Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896, 201.
“My brother’s . . . perseverance”: Goode, “The Three Secretaries,” in Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896, 205.
Langley revisited the philosopher’s: Cyrus Adler, I Have Considered the Days (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941), 183–84. Adler said Langley “summer after summer went to England and had the privilege of sitting in a corner of Carlyle’s library and hearing the great man talk.” After the two shared a four-hour carriage ride, Carlyle told a friend that Langley was “the most sensible American he had ever met.” When Langley heard this he said, “Yes, I was with him for four hours yesterday and never opened my mouth.” For the possible influence of Carlyle’s advice to “know thy work” on Langley, see Ernest Samuels’s introduction to The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), viii. Samuels said this advice of Carlyle’s had registered on Adams, Langley’s friend and fellow native Bostonian.
“He had not as yet published anything”: Andrew Dickson White, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” in “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. XLIX (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1907), 9.
The college had taken it: Allegheny Observatory in 1867, Donald Leroy Obendorf, “Samuel P. Langley: Solar Scientist, 1867–1891 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1969), 2–7; White, “Samuel P. Langley,” 10.
“his strength burdened”: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 91.
The time service boosted”: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 9–29. For the role of midwestern observatories in public service, see Patricia S. Whitesell, “Nineteenth-Century Longitude Determinations in the Great Lakes Region: Government-University Collaborations,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, December 2000, 131–57.
They complained that Langley: Fight over SPL’s pay and privileges, Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 48–55.
“the sun’s disk is seen”: SPL, “The Sun: A ‘Total’ Eclipse,” Scientific American, July 27, 1878.
And the sun had practical advantages: Why SPL studied sun, Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 76–80.
“perhaps the only celestial object”: White, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” Cyrus Adler, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian for 1906 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 515–33.
“whose actual vastness”: SPL, The New Astronomy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), 19.
“One who has sat at a powerful telescope”: SPL, New Astronomy, 17.
Of his hundreds of sunspot: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 110–16.
He took pride in his attention to detail: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 210, 157.
“that heat and light were not two different things”: Goode, “The Three Secretaries,” in Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896, 218.
“The thoroughness, ingenuity, and beauty”: An unnamed Smithsonian regent quoted in Paul H. Oehser, Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and Its Leaders (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949), 117–18.
He pushed aides to do: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 226–30.
He tended to exaggerate: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 161–68, 193–99, 220–33.
“A certain part of Langley”: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 227.
“I particularly remember”: White, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” 18.
“loved to talk with men”: White, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” 19.
“There was something reaching”: John A. Brashear., “A Biographical Sketch of S. P. Langley,” in Miscellaneous Scientific Papers of the Allegheny Observatory, No. 19; reprinted from Popular Astronomy, Vol XIV, 1906.
“a strong craving for real society”: Adler, “Samuel Pierpont Langley.”
He attended meetings: Meetings with medical society and drugstore group, John A. Brashear, “A Biographical Sketch of S. P. Langley,” in Miscellaneous Scientific Papers of the Allegheny Observatory, No. 19; reprinted from Popular Astronomy, Vol XIV, 1906.
“You have seen for yourself”: Quoted in Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 57–58.
“almost every thing outside”: SPL, “History of the Allegheny Observatory,” in John E. Parke, ed., Recollections of Seventy Years and Historical Gleanings of Allegheny, Pennsylvania (Boston: Rand, Avery & Co.), 1886.
“In the astronomical circles of the Old World”: Quoted in Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 69.
“a great addition to the university”: Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 57–58.
“in a decidedly roundabout way”: William Hallock, “What Science Owes to Professor Langley,” New York Times, March 4, 1906.
“I know nothing about chemistry”: Quoted in Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 81.
“Professor Langley. . .shares the views”: Richard A. Proctor, Old and New Astronomy (London: Longmans, Green, 1892), 333n.
Among the amateurs on the program: Israel Lancaster at 1886 meeting of AAAS, “Birds that Did Not Soar,” New York Times, August 24, 1886; Tom D. Crouch, A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875–1905 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), 38–41.
“I was brought to think”: SPL, “The ‘Flying-Machine,’” McClure’s Magazine, June 1897, 648.
“the whole subject”: Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, v. 1, 2.
“Not to build a flying-machine,” SPL, “The ‘Flying Machine,’” 648.
In one key test: Experiment with brass plate on whirling arm, SPL, “The ‘Flying Machine,’” 649.
scenes from childhood: SPL, “The ‘Flying Machine,’” 650.
“I have no wish or ambition”: Quoted in Cyrus Adler, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” 515–33.
“to meet the requirements of flight”: Langley Memoir, pt. 1, 7.
“a light wooden frame”: Langley Memoir, v. I, p. 9
“It was a very amusing sight”: Webster Prentiss True, The Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Scientific Series, vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Series, Inc., 1929), 290.
&nb
sp; “It is enough,” he wrote: SPL, “The ‘Flying-Machine,’” 654.
“Isn’t that maddening!”: Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973), 362.
“Whether from natural disposition”: Abbot quoted in Obendorf dissertation, “Samuel P. Langley . . . ,” 207.
In engineering, the approach: Tom D. Crouch, A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875–1905 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), 140.
“In designing this first aerodrome”: Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, pt. 1, 30.
“the lines which Nature”: Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, pt. 1, 32.
then alter “the form of construction”: SPL, “The ‘Flying Machine,’” 654.
The term “aerodrome”: Basil L. Gildersleeve to AGB, 3/15/1913, box 143, AGB papers, LC. See also Crouch, A Dream of Wings, 133.
“backward steps”: SPL, “The History of a Doctrine,” American Journal of Science, January 1889, 2.
“It appeared”: All from Langley Memoir, pt. 1, pp. 38–66.
“the point was reached”: SPL, “The Flying-Machine,” 654.
“pitch up or down”: SPL to AGB, box 131, AGB papers, LC.
On May 6, 1896: SPL, “The ‘Flying Machine,’ 658–59. See also Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, pt. 1, 106–08. Langley’s article in McClure’s includes Bell’s description of the flight, which appeared as a letter in Science, 5/22/1896.
“a man who cannot be replaced”: Minutes of the SI Regents, 1/27/1897, SIA.
“the severe strain of his scientific labors”: Cyrus Adler, “Samuel Pierpont Langley,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1906, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1907, 527.
He asked the regents: Minutes of the SI Regents, 1/27/1897, SIA.
