by James Tobin
“The aeroplane means many things”: “Remarks by Milton Wright . . . ,” Ivonette Wright Miller, comp., Wright Reminiscences (Air Force Museum Foundation, 1978), 68–71.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The Wrights’ Published Writings
The central source for any study of the Wright brothers is their own mass of personal and business correspondence and technical diaries. Most of these are housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Hundreds of the brothers’ letters and key diary entries are collected in Marvin W. McFarland’s richly annotated The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright (vol. 1, 1899–1905; vol. 2, 1906–1948) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), a great treasure of public scholarship. McFarland’s main purpose was to document the invention of the airplane; thus the collection is weighted toward the technical and away from the personal. The technical appendices on the Wrights’ nomenclature, wind tunnel, airplanes, motors, and propellers remain the best explanations of their topics some fifty years after Fred Howard (then a member of McFarland’s staff at the Library of Congress, later a distinguished Wright biographer) composed them. The Papers must be supplemented by Fred C. Kelly, ed., Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), which includes excerpts of numerous important letters that McFarland omitted.
A much more recent and now indispensable addition to the published corpus is Peter L. Jakab and Rick Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000). This is a comprehensive collection of sixty-nine articles, press statements, and interviews, including many heretofore available only to the most diligent miners of periodical libraries. Five important statements by associates of the Wrights are included as an appendix.
Another essential source is Milton Wright’s published Diaries, 1857–1917 (Dayton: Wright State University Libraries, 1999), compiled by Dawne Dewey, head of Special Collections and Archives at Wright State University. The bishop’s nightly discipline of sixty years did not leave us a very readable memoir, but it did provide an important source of insight on the life of his family and a crucial record of his sons’ daily doings.
Manuscript Sources
Most of the brothers’ personal papers—letters, diaries, legal documents, clippings, photographic negatives—are housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This narrative relies heavily on the personal letters of Wilbur, Orville, Katharine, and Milton Wright in the “Family Correspondence” series, only a small number of which are published in the McFarland volumes mentioned above. The much larger “General Correspondence” series contains much crucial material as well, including the brothers’ exchanges with such figures as Octave Chanute, Samuel Langley, Alexander Graham Bell, Glenn Curtiss, George Spratt, Ferdinand Ferber, Griffith Brewer, and hundreds of others, some of whom Orville Wright favored with small but important nuggets of information in the years after his brother’s death. The family’s scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine articles, available on microfilm, are a priceless source of details, large and small.
An equally fascinating source is the Wright Brothers Collection at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, which includes the brothers’ aeronautical library; the leading collection of Wright photographs (many of which are available on the Internet); the diaries and papers of Milton Wright; copies of the Wrights’ correspondence with Octave Chanute and George Spratt; and hundreds of other documents reflecting the family’s life and their community of Dayton, Ohio.
An absorbing collection of Katharine Wright Haskell’s letters to her friend, fiancé, and husband, Henry Haskell, is held by the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. This is available on microfilm.
The Library of Congress holds the papers of Octave Chanute—including microfilm copies of Chanute’s extensive correspondence with aeronautical enthusiasts around the world—and the enormously rich collection left by the family of Alexander Graham Bell. Many Bell letters and documents are available in electronic form through the library’s website. The privately published Bulletin of the Aerial Experiment Association and Beinn Bhreagh Recorder are important sources for Bell’s aeronautical work and the short but prolific career of the AEA.
Many of Samuel Langley’s papers were lost to fire long ago, but many others remain in two repositories at the Smithsonian Institution: the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Ramsey Room of the National Air and Space Museum. The former tends more to reflect Langley’s term as the administrative leader of the Institution, while the latter includes more material from his aeronautical work, including the voluminous “waste books” kept by Langley and his aides. The Air and Space archives and the museum’s library contain much additional material that sheds light on the Wrights; their contemporaries, and the birth of powered flight. At the Smithsonian Archives, the papers of Charles Walcott and Richard Rathbun, Langley’s associates, were helpful on several points.
A collection of Wright materials at the United Brethren Historical Center at Huntington College, Huntington, Indiana, mostly pertaining to Milton Wright’s career, has been little mined by scholars. Especially interesting is a lengthy series of letters from Bishop Wright to his friend, the Reverend Jacob Howe.
Newspapers and Magazines
Several series of scrapbooks ease the task of finding contemporary published accounts—especially in periodicals that are defunct or without indexes—of the Wrights and their rivals. These include the Wrights’ scrapbooks at the Library of Congress; Langley’s scrapbooks at the Ramsey Room of the National Air and Space Museum; and several additional Wright scrapbooks at Special Collections, Wright State University, including an album devoted to the Fort Myer flights that was compiled and presented to Orville Wright by C. H. Claudy, an admiring newsman.
Among mainstream periodicals, Scientific American covered the dawn of aviation more thoroughly than most, though its editors were skeptical about the Wrights early on. A good collection of the harder-to-find aeronautical press is housed in Special Collections at Wright State.
Biographies, Memoirs, and Monographs
The comprehensive biographies of the Wrights are Fred Howard, Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers (New York: Knopf, 1987; revised edition, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1998); and Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: Norton, 1989). Crouch delves more deeply into the family’s history. An essential supplement to these fine books is Peter L. Jakab, Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), a fascinating contribution to the history of science and a deeply insightful study of the brothers as thinkers. Also helpful on technical matters is Harry Combs (with Martin Caidin), Kill Devil Hill: Discovering the Secret of the Wright Brothers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979). John Evangelist Walsh, One Day at Kitty Hawk (New York: Crowell, 1975), though tendentious in his attack on Orville Wright, offers interesting views and information on the brothers’ relative contributions and Orville’s attempts to encourage history to judge them in his favor. The only biography that Orville authorized, Fred C. Kelly’s The Wright Brothers (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1943), now seems trite, outdated, and not entirely trustworthy. But it remains an important source of details that Orville revealed to Kelly and no one else. The first biography, John R. McMahon’s The Wright Brothers: Fathers of Flight (Boston: Little, Brown, 1930), which Orville suppressed in an earlier form, is interesting chiefly for that reason.
A fine reference work that helped me on countless factual points is Arthur G. Renstrom’s Wilbur & Orville Wright: A Chronology (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1975). Similar help on Dayton came from Mary Ann Johnson’s carefully researched A Field Guide to Flight: On the Aviation Trail in Dayton, Ohio (Dayton: Landfall Press, rev. ed., 1996). A good source on Dayton as a center of invention is Mark Bernstein’s
Grand Eccentrics: Turning the Century: Dayton and the Inventing of America (Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, 1996).
The only full study of Milton Wright’s life and career—and a good one—is Daryl Melvin Elliott, “Bishop Milton Wright and the Quest for a Christian America” (Ph.D. dissertation, Drew University, 1992). For the life of the Wrights’ largely invisible but important assistant, see H. R. DuFour, Charles E. Taylor: The Wright Brothers’ Mechanician (Dayton, Ohio: Prime Printing, 1997). A rich source of family anecdotes is Ivonette Wright Miller’s compilation of Wright Reminiscences (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base: Air Force Museum Foundation, 1978).
The Wrights’ extraordinary photographic legacy is captured in several attractive books, including Spencer Dunmore and Fred E. C. Culick, On Great White Wings: The Wright Brothers and the Race for Flight (New York: Hyperion, 2001); Russell Freedman, The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane (New York: Holiday House, 1991); and Lynanne Wescott and Paula Degen, Wind and Sand: The Story of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983).
Insightful essays by important historians of aviation (and a full version of Amos Root’s 1905 eyewitness account) appear in Richard P. Hallion, ed., The Wright Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978). Technical reviews of the Wrights as engineers appear in Howard S. Wolko, The Wright Flyer: An Engineering Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987).
The authoritative work on Bell, by the great historian of science Robert V. Bruce, is Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973), which shaped my view of the inventor and Mrs. Bell and supplied a number of anecdotes. Excellent and well-illustrated chapters on Bell’s aeronautical aspirations appear in Edwin S. Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997). J. H. Parkin, Bell and Baldwin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), is useful on technical points. Ann J. Bishundayal’s Mabel Hubbard Bell: A Biography (Protea Publishing, 2002) is the only book-length treatment of Mrs. Bell’s life. For the life of Glenn Curtiss, I relied on C. R. Roseberry’s thorough Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972).
There is no full study of Samuel Langley’s life and work. A summary is provided in J. Gordon Vaeth, Langley: Man of Science and Flight (New York: Ronald Press, 1966). The most complete source on the aerodrome work—though occasionally impenetrable—is the two-volume Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1911). Authorship was divided between Langley and Charles Manly. Key letters and diary entries are collected in Robert B. Meyer, Jr., ed., Langley’s Aero Engine of 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971). For Langley’s career in astronomy, including his travails with colleagues at the Western University of Pennsylvania, by far the best source is Donald Obendorf, “Samuel Pierpont Langley: Solar Scientist, 1867–1891” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1969). Langley’s drive for support from the U.S. War Department is well covered in Russell Jay Parkinson, “Politics, Patents and Planes: Military Aeronautics in the United States, 1863–1907” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1963).
Several studies in the early history of aviation have been my valued guides. Tom D. Crouch, A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875–1905 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), paints a detailed picture of the context in which Langley and the Wrights did their work. Among several foundational works by Charles Gibbs-Smith, the most important for this book was The Rebirth of European Aviation, 1902–1908: A Study of the Wright Brothers’ Influence (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974), which tells its story with nearly day-by-day documentation and detail. A second superb contribution to the European side of the story is Alfred Gollin, No Longer an Island: Britain and the Wright Brothers, 1902–1909 (London: Heineman, 1984).
The invention of the airplane has been treated, of course, largely in the realms of biography and the history of science and engineering. But technology is only part of the story. I benefited from these considerations of flight as a cultural phenomenon: Lawrence Goldstein, The Flying Machine and Modern Literature (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986); Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908–1918 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994); and Joseph J. Corn, The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Websites
Among numerous Wright-oriented websites, the standout is Nick Engler’s Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company and Museum, a vast storehouse of Wrightiana at www.first-to-fly.com. Also highly interesting is the First Flight website (http://firstflight.open.ac.uk/), a project in virtual science education at the United Kingdom’s Open University. The site includes fascinating interactive simulations of the Wrights’ wind tunnel balances and 1903 powered flyer.
INDEX
Note: Illustrations are indicated in italics.
Abbot, Charles, 23, 61–62
and Samuel P. Langley, 60
stated Wright brothers invented the airplane, 365
Adams, Henry, 5, 99
Ader, Clement, 167
Adler, Cyrus, 59, 62, 169, 187
and embezzlement by Karr, 233
noted Langley’s stroke, 242, 243
quashed coup against Langley, 201
weekly inspection tour, 101
with Langley after last aerodrome test, 196–97
Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), 285, 323
and wing-warping, 277–78
and White Wing, 293
and Wright brothers, 277
biplane glider, 274
business plans, 330
final meeting, 334
founding, 272–73
meeting, 328–29
selling Red Wings, 304
test flights, 286–87
tetrahedral aerodrome, 327–28
Aero Club of America, 338
and AEA, 278–79, 285
and Scientific American trophy, 288
dissatisfaction with Wright brothers, 302, 303
honored Samuel Langley, 243
Aéro-Club of France, 228
address by Octave Chanute, 162
and Alberto Santos-Dumont, 135, 264
dislike of Americans’ secrecy, 301
disparaged Americans, 290
first woman to attend, 335
Frank Lahm verified Wrights’ claim, 240–41
French ambition to claim aviation glory, 202–3
prize money to improve fixed-wing flight, 164
worried about Wright brothers, 209
aerodrome (air runner), 5, 24. See also Langley aerodrome
and wartime reconnaissance, 30–35
improvements to, 57–58
aerodrome engine, 58, 156–59, 166–67
gas engine, 72
lightweight engine, 64
rotary engine, 86
steam engine, 8
Aerodrome Nos. 0, 1, and 2, 24
Aerodrome No. 5, 5, 7–8, 25, 26, 362
Aerodrome No. 6, 2, 5, 25
aerodromic work, 28
Aerodromics Room of Smithsonian, 57, 58
aerodynamic forces, balancing, 218–19
Aeronautical Annual, The, (James Means, ed.), 51
Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, 160
Aeronautics, 304
aeronautics in France, 290
Aeronautic Society of New York, 338
ailerons, 340, 362, 363
and AEA, 277–78, 287
Airship No. I (Santos-Dumont), 133
Airship No. V (Santos-Dumont), 134
air speed, 208
Alexander, Patrick, 160–61, 182, 223
Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 337
Allegheny Observatory, 10, 16
Allen, Brigadier Gen
eral James, 312, 315
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 17, 18
angle of attack, 75
angle of incidence, 75
Anti-Saloon League, 213
Archdeacon, Ernest, 164, 228–29, 268, 290
and Octave Chanute, 163
and Henri Farman in France, 295
and Flyer tests in France, 306
and glider competitions, 209
and Grande Semaine de l’Aviation de la Champagne, 339
and Alberto Santos-Dumont, 264
and Gabriel Voisin, 210
doubted Wrights’ word, 240
leader of the club, 162
regarding Langley’s progress, 164
to Wright brothers, 229, 309
Arlington Heights, 311
Army-Navy Club, 313
Associated Press, 194, 195, 202
astronomical time, 11
automatic aeroplane stability, 219
aviation meets at Rheims, 343
Baden-Powell, Major Baden Fletcher Smyth, 160
Baird, Spencer, 19–20
balance, and wind, 277
Wright brothers’ system, 278
balance attained in Flyer, 236
balance in aerodromes, 25
balances, 384–85, p. 127
balancing aerodynamic forces, 218–19
Baldwin, Frederick Walker “Casey,” 270, 271, 328
and Red Wing, 275, 276
and White Wing, 287, 291
as chief engineer, 272
comments on Glenn Curtiss, 334
from Alexander Graham Bell, 277
Baldwin, Captain Thomas, 274
airship pilot, 207, 247
California Arrow dirigible, 312
and Glenn Curtiss, 272, 333
Balfour, Arthur, 337
ballooning, 161
Balzer, Stephen, 35
and Langley, 58, 59, 71–72
and Langley legend, 361
and Manly, 62–63
efforts to build engine, 7l–73
bats, 21
Battery, 352, 353
Battery Park, 345, 350
