by James Tobin
“If the trials are successful”: WW to OW, 8/2/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“While I was operating alone”: WW to MW, 9/13/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“You should get everything ready”: “Be exceedingly cautious,” WW to OW, 8/30/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
The air was calm: Spectators and decision for WW’s first flight at Les Hunaudières, WW to OW, 8/9/1908, FC, WBP, LC; Kelly, Wright Brothers, 236–37.
For several hours he worked: WW’s preparations for 8/8/1908 flight, Fred C. Kelly, The Wright Brothers, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943), 236–37; WW to OW, 8/9/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
One of those watching: François Peyrey’s account of WW’s 8/8/1908 flight, “Aerial Navigation,” The Times (London), 8/14/1908. See also Fred Howard, Wilbur and Orville (New York: Knopf, 1987), 256–59. Howard’s account of WW’s flights at Le Mans is especially thorough and vivid.
Paul Zens, who: Newspaper coverage of WW’s first flights at Les Hunaudières, with comments from French aviators, Charles Gibbs-Smith, The Rebirth of European Aviation (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974), 286–87.
“For a long time”: Quoted in Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 368.
“Nous sommes battus”: Gibbs-Smith, Rebirth of European Aviation, 288.
“violent gusts”: Frantz Reichel in Le Figaro, quoted in Gibbs-Smith, Rebirth of European Aviation, 304.
“Wright is a titanic genius!”: Gibbs-Smith, Rebirth of European Aviation, 287.
“could turn very short curves”: WW to OW, 8/9/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“Blériot & Delagrange”: WW to OW, 8/15/1908, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 912.
“I believe that our machines”: Gibbs-Smith, Rebirth of European Aviation, 289.
The great European newspapers: European press reports of WW’s flights at Le Mans, Gibbs-Smith, Rebirth of European Aviation, 279–85.
“You never saw anything”: WW to OW, 8/15/1908, McFarland, Papers, vol. 2, 911–13.
“partly because I have not felt”: WW to KW, 9/10/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“they were packed exactly”: OW to WW, 8/23/1908, McFarland, Papers, vol. 2, 914–15.
The only mishap: Horses uneasy at sight of Baldwin’s dirigible, “Aeroplane Hard Target for Guns,” New York Herald, 8/29/1908, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
Brigadier General James: General Allen’s skepticism, “Wright, Sure of Victory, Ready to Fly Monday,” New York Herald, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
“Would you really think”: “Wright Almost Ready for Flight,” New York Herald, 8/25/1908, C. H. Claudy scrapbook, 1908–09, WBC, WSU.
“They talked only to each other”: Benjamin D. Foulois and C. V. Glines, From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts: The Memoirs of Major General Benjamin D. Foulois (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 52.
“The Signal Corps does not hesitate”: OW to WW, 8/23/1908, McFarland, Papers, vol. 2, 914–15.
“You have probably seen the photos”: Glenn Curtiss to AGB, 8/29/1908, in Bulletin of the Aerial Experiment Association, 9/7/08, NASM Library, SI.
he immediately conceived: OW’s private reports on Selfridge, OW to WW, 9/6/1908; OW to MW, 9/7/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“We haven’t any secrets now”: “Orville Wright Bares Secrets of Big Aeroplane,” New York Herald, Claudy scrapbook, WBP, WSU.
“The reporters seem to think”: OW to KW, 8/29/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
People from the neighborhood: Onlookers’ questions at Fort Myer, “Aeroplanes for Transportation,” New York Herald, 8/30/1908, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
“stacks of prominent people”: OW to KW, 8/29/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I am meeting some very handsome young ladies!”: OW to KW, 8/29/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“Work goes slowly”: OW to WW, 8/24/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“Don’t go out”: WW to OW, 8/25/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“turning the entire time”: OW to MW, 9/7/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I didn’t say I was going to land”: “Balky Motor Delays Fort Myer Tests,” 9/1/1908, New York Herald, Claudy scrapbook, Wright Brothers Collection, WSU.
On the morning of September 3: OW’s 70-second flight at Fort Myer of 9/3/1908, “Fly? Why, Of Course,” Washington Star, 9/4/1908, scrapbooks, WBP, LC; “Orville Wright Flies at Fort Myer,” New York Herald, 9/4/1908, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU. The account of the Star is the more detailed and vivid. The account of tears on the faces of newsmen is from Ivonette Wright Miller in her compilation, Wright Reminiscences.
“Have I anything to say?”: “Wright’s Flight Pleases Squier,” Washington Times, 9/9/1908, scrapbooks, WBP, LC.
General Nelson Miles: Comments on OW’s record flights of 9/9/1908, “Mr. Orville Wright, in Fifty-Seven and Sixty-Two Minute Flights, Far Exceeds the World’s Record for Aeroplane Navigation,” New York Herald, 9/10/1908, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
“make them feel until their dying days”: “Let Dayton Honor Orville and Wilbur Wright,” Dayton Herald, 9/10/1908, scrapbooks, WBP, LC.
“Well, it was fine news”: WW to KW, 9/13/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“Très bien”: WW to OW, 9/10/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“ON BEHALF OF AERIAL EXPERIMENT ASSOCIATION”: AGB to OW, 9/11/1908, GC, WBP, LC.
“They treat you in France”: MW to WW, 9/9/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“What would you think”: KW to OW, 9/12/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“The world is all a fleeting”: Quotation from Moore poem, MW to WW, 9/9/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I do not think I will make many more practice flights”: OW to KW, 9/15/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
After three smooth rounds: OW’s key account of the accident of 9/17/1908 appears in OW to WW, 11/14/1908, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 936–39.
A photographer named W. S. Clime: Key accounts of the 9/17/1908 crash at Fort Myer include “Airship Falls; Lieut. Selfridge Killed, Wright Hurt,” Washington Post, 9/18/1908, scrapbooks, WBP, LC; “Mr. Orville Wright Hurt, Lieutenant Selfridge Killed as Aeroplane Falls One Hundred Feet,” New York Herald, 9/18/1908, Claudy scrapbook, WBC, WSU; W. S. Clime, “The Wright Accident by an Eyewitness,” Bulletin of the Aerial Experiment Association, 11/16/1908, NASM Library, SI.
“I cannot help thinking”: WW’s reaction to Fort Myer crash, WW to KW, 9/20/1908, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 925–27; WW to MW, 9/22/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“looking pretty badly”: KW to Lorin Wright, 9/19/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“school can go”: KW to WW, 9/24/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I am awfully sorry”: WW to KW, 9/20/1908, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 925–27.
When she was not: KW’s experiences at Fort Myer, KW to MW, 9/21/1908; KW to MW, 10/25/1908; KW to WW, 11/13/1908, FC, WBP, LC; KW to Agnes Beck, Wright Brothers Collection, Special Collections, Wright State University.
“The natural inference”: MW to KW, 9/26/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I am sorry that I could not come home”: WW to OW, 1/1/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
“The airship which, within ten years”: G. H. Curtiss, “Future Air Travel,” Bulletin of the AEA, 10/26/1908, NASM Library, SI.
Chapter Thirteen: “The Greatest Courage and Achievements”
In the time remaining: Bell’s determination to continue tetrahedral experiments in last six months of AEA, C. R. Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight (New York, Doubleday, 1972), 140–41.
“has only to look at the engine”: Quoted in Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 156.
“What we want to know”: Quoted in Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 144–45.
“We have read so much”: Glenn Curtiss to AGB and Mabel Bell, 11/24/1908, Bulletin of the AEA, 12/16/1908, NASM Library, SI.
Bell wired: Bell-Curtiss exchange about January 1909 meeting of AEA, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 147–48.
“I am very much averse”: Quoted in Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 150.
he had been thinking about converting: AGB’s and Curtiss’s views on future of AEA, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 150–52; J. H. Parkin, Bell and Baldwin: Their Development
of Aerodromes and Hydrodromes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), 155–61.
Bell said there was no point: Discussions of company to succeed AEA, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 147–52, Parkin, Bell and Baldwin, 155–61.
“Alec is not discouraged”: Quoted in Dorothy Harley Eber, Genius at Work: Images of Alexander Graham Bell (New York: Viking, 1982), 126.
On the ice, Bell: Accounts of Cygnet II trials, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 153–54; Parkin, Bell and Baldwin, 96–97.
“Although at times it seemed”: Copy, Mabel Bell’s draft article on the AEA, box 143, AGB papers, LC.
“Papa feels down”: Mabel Bell to “little girl,” [Marion Bell Fairchild], 2/24/1909, box 154, AGB papers, LC.
Bell immediately began: Adjustments to Cygnet II, AGB to Mabel Bell, 3/6/1909, [online citation, in “AEA dissolves” folder].
Curtiss weighed his options: Negotiations for formation of Herring-Curtiss Company, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 152–53, 156–60.
“America has taken the lead”: Announcement of Herring-Curtiss Company, “Aeroplane Factory for this Country,” New York Times, 3/4/1909; Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 157.
“would like to have Mr. Bell”: Glenn Curtiss to Mabel Bell, 3/12/1909, box 59, AGB papers, LC.
Casey Baldwin, who had: Casey Baldwin’s remarks on Herring-Curtiss venture, quoted in Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 158; Baldwin’s souring on Curtiss as engineer, Frederick W. Baldwin to Mabel Bell, 3/11/1909, AGB papers, LC.
“high appreciation”: AGB to Charles J. Bell, 3/31/1909, in Bulletin of the AEA, 4/12/1909, NASM Library, SI.
“The Aerial Experiment Association is now a thing of the past”: “Dissolution of the A.E.A.,” Bulletin of the AEA, 4/12/1909, NASM Library, SI.
“Can’t you come over”: WW to OW, 11/14/1908, McFarland, Papers, vol. 2, 939–40.
“I know that you love ‘Old Steele’”: WW to KW, 12/8/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
She was more than ready: Katharine’s complaints about MW and OW at home, late 1908, KW to WW, 11/30/1908, KW to WW, 12/7/1908, 12/17/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
“I am so tired”: KW to WW, 12/17/1908, FC, WBP, LC.
At the Paris station: Reception of OW and KW in Paris, KW to MW, 1/13/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
For three months Kate: KW’s activities and observations in France, KW to MW, 1/17/1909, 1/20/1909, 1/24/1909, 2/1/1909, 2/8/1909, 2/11/1909, 2/16/1909, 2/22/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
Will assembled the demonstration: Setting of assembly and flights at Rome, WW to MW, 4/4/1909; WW to OW, 4/4/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
Kate now found the company: KW’s activities and observations in Italy, KW to MW, 4/11/1909, 4/14/1909, 4/20/1909, 4/25/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
“Not long ago little old Suzanne”: Quoted in Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908–18 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 104.
“A horse race, an automobile contest”: “The Rheims Aviation Week,” The Times, 8/13/1909.
Blériot raised a ruckus: Blériot’s protest of evening flights, “The Rheims Aviation Week,” the Times, 8/16/1909.
“Those few packages?”: Owen S. Lieberg, The First Air Race (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 1.
“a dangerous competitor”: “Curtiss Ready to Fly,” New York Times, 8/15/1909.
“The event was billed”: Lieburg, The First Air Race, 126–44; Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 189–97; Glenn H. Curtiss and Augustus Post, The Curtiss Aviation Book (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1912), 65–75.
“It is evident the serious effect”: Copy, Julien A. Ripley to AGB, 8/30/1909, box 143, AGB papers, LC.
“great land parades”: “Fourth Annual Report on the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission to the Legislature of the State of New York,” 5/20/1910.
“striking, even dramatic”: Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission, The Hudson-Fulton Celebration (Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon, 1910), 486–89. This passage covers the Wright and Curtiss contracts.
“special attention to this contest”: “The Fulton Airship Flight Contest,” Scientific American, 4/17/1909.
“I have not come here to astonish the world”: “Says He Could Fly Over Skyscrapers,” Dayton Herald, 9/20/1909, Hudson-Fulton scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
One of them observed closely: Comparison of Wright and Curtiss and atmosphere at work sheds on Governors Island, undated newspaper article in Hudson-Fulton scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
“How do you do, Mr. Curtiss”: Wright-Curtiss exchange upon Curtiss’s arrival at Governors Island, Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 212.
Loening got through: Loening meets WW, Grover Loening, Our Wings Grow Faster (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935), 3–10.
“The winds will probably be rather strong”: WW to OW, 9/26/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
“I wouldn’t fly over the buildings”: “Strong Wind Stops Flight,” Dayton Journal, 9/29/09, Hudson-Fulton scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
Years later, Loening said: Grover Loening’s claim that Curtiss did not fly on the morning of 9/29/1909, Loening, Our Wings Grow Faster, 10–11; WW’s comment, “Wright Circles Liberty in Second of 3 Flights,” New York Press, 9/30/1909, Hudson-Fulton scrapbook, WBC, WSU.
“Within minutes Will and Charlie”: accounts of WW’s Statue of Liberty flight include “Liberty Statue Encircled by Wright in Aeroplane,” New York Evening Sun, 9/29/1909; “Wright in Daring Flights Rounds Liberty Statue . . . ,” The Globe, 9/29/1909; “After Twice Circling ‘Liberty,’ Wright Makes Third Flight,” New York Evening Telegram, 9/29/1909; “Wright Flies Around Liberty Statue,” Evening Mail, 9/29/1909; “Wright Circles Liberty in Second of 3 Flights,” New York American, 9/30/1909; also coverage in New York World, Hudson-Fulton scrapbook, WBC, Special Collections, WSU.
“these exciting times”: And “You know I have the greatest interest,” MW to WW, 10/2/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
“like stopping the battle”: Arthur Ruhl, “In the Crowd,” Collier’s, 10/16/09.
Curtiss’s contract was due: Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 214–15.
“I didn’t like it up there”: “Curtiss Flies for 45 seconds, Then, Fearful, Alights,” New York World, 10/4/1909, scrapbooks, WBP, LC.
“as if they were being driven on wheels”: “Air Voyage Past Skyscrapers Most Remarkable Ever Made,” New York World, 10/5/1909, scrapbooks, WBP, LC; “Wright Does a Fine Flight,” New York Sun, 10/5/1909, scrapbooks, WBP, LC; “Mr. Wilbur Wright Makes Twenty-four Mile Flight,” New York Herald, 10/5/1909, scrapbooks, WBP, LC.
“It was an interesting trip”: WW to MW, 10/7/1909, FC, WBP, LC.
“It is all over, gentlemen”: “A Talk with Wilbur Wright,” Scientific American, 10/23/1909, 290, reprinted in Jakab and Young, eds., Published Writings, 206–08.
They chatted for only a few minutes: Cass Gilbert meeting with WW, “Cass Gilbert and Wilbur Wright,” Minnesota History, September 1941.
Epilogue
“I have brought to a close”: SPL, “The ‘Flying-Machine,’” McClure’s Magazine, June 1897, 660.
he rode as Orville’s passenger: WW and OW fly together, entry, 5/25/1910, MW, Diaries, 1857–1917, 714.
Once, finding himself: OW to Paul Brockett, 11/13/1917, GC, WBP, LC.
“He was entirely too daring”: Hart Berg to WW, 9/10/1909, GC, WBP, LC.
“we are too thirsty for air”: quoted in Wohl, Passion for Wings, 110.
“to ask if you do not think”: copy, George Spratt to WW and OW, 9/29/1909, GC, WBP, LC.
“a trifle hurt”: WW to Spratt, 10/16/1909, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 967–68.
“I do not see how you”: Spratt to OW, 11/27/1922, GC, WBP, LC.
“not wishing to add”: undated draft, OW to Charles S. Foltz, quoted in McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 1135, note 1.
“I am afraid, my friend”: OC to WW, 1/23/1910, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 980–82.
“As to inordinate desire”: WW to OC, 1/29/1910, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 982–86.
“his labor
s had vast influence”: WW, “The Life and Work of Octave Chanute,” Aeronautics, January 1911, reprinted in Jakab and Young, Published Writings, 168–69.
“specially meritorious investigations”: Charles Walcott to WW and OW, 2/18/1909, GC, WBP, LC.
He congratulated the Wrights: “Historical Address of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell,” attached to Charles Walcott to WW and OW, 2/17/1910, “Smithsonian” file, box 20, GC, WBP, LC.
One carrier of the legend: C. B. Veal, “Manly, the Engineer,” S.A.E. Journal, April 1939.
“still confident”: “Langley Airplane in New Dispute,” New York Times, 10/25/1931, reprinted in Robert B. Meyer, Jr., ed., Langley’s Aero Engine of 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971), 166–69.
“We had hoped in 1906”: WW to M. Hévésy, 1/25/1912, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 1035.
“A short life”: entry of 5/30/1912, Bishop Milton Wright, Diaries: 1857–1917 (Dayton, OH: Wright State University Libraries, 1999), 749.
Curtiss responded with an extraordinary maneuver: The struggle between OW and the Smithsonian over SPL’s aerodrome is thoroughly reported in Tom D. Crouch, “Capable of Flight: The Feud Between the Wright Brothers and the Smithsonian,” American Heritage of Invention and Technology, spring 1987, 34–46.
“There were thousands of men”: OW to Lloyd D. Bower, 3/30/1928, GC, WBP, LC.
“I had thought that truth”: OW, “Copy of statement for aeronautical magazine,” GC, WBP, LC.
she accepted his approach: KW to Henry Haskell, 6/16/1925, Katharine Wright Haskell papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri at Kansas City [hereafter WHMC].
“It hasn’t been the usual”: KW to Henry Haskell, 6/18/1925, WHMC.
“Altogether, Harry, my world”: ibid.
“I can’t go to Dayton yet”: KW to Agnes Osborne Beck, 3/11/1927, Agnes Osborne Beck/Katharine Wright letters, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University.
He watched the proliferation: OW to George Burba, 10/12/1917, GC, WBP, LC.
“I once thought the aeroplane”: OW to Major Lester D. Gardner, 8/28/1945, McFarland, ed., Papers, vol. 2, 1176.
others did too, including Charles Lindbergh: The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), 276–77, 383.
