The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

by Crouch, Tom D.

  Orville Wright was justifiably outraged. At the very outset of their careers, he and his brother had written to the Smithsonian for advice as to useful readings in the field of aeronautics. They were always careful to mention that the involvement of the world-renowned Samuel Langley in aeronautics had given them initial confidence. At the same time, they owed no technical debt to Langley, nor had they ever believed that his machine was capable of flight.

  The Wright brothers’ relationship with the Smithsonian began to sour after Langley’s death. Walcott, at Bell’s suggestion, presented the first Langley Medal to the Wrights. In preparing the text of their remarks for publication, however, the secretary used a section of an earlier Wright letter which “helped to create a false impression over the world that the Wrights had acknowledged indebtedness to Langley’s scientific work.”7

  The brothers also became suspicious when, in 1910, Walcott all but refused their offer to donate the 1903 Wright airplane to the Smithsonian. Walcott had written in March 1910 requesting “one of your machines, or a model thereof, for exhibition purposes.” The Wrights responded by offering to have a model of any of their craft constructed for the museum; or they could “reconstruct the 1903 machine with which the first flights were made at Kitty Hawk. Most of the parts are still in existence.”

  Walcott replied that the Smithsonian would really prefer the 1908 (actually 1909) military Flyer. In addition, he requested several scale models of Wright aircraft and some full-scale engines to display in conjunction with specimens from the Langley collection, “making the exhibit illustrate two very important steps in the history of the aeronautical art.”8

  The Smithsonian planned to exhibit the 12–16-horsepower Wright engine of 1903 next to the 52-horsepower Langley engine; a 1909 Wright aircraft with parts of the 1903 Langley machine; and small-scale models of manned Wright aircraft beside the larger unmanned Langley steam models of 1896. Small wonder that suspicions were aroused.

  Now the Smithsonian was sponsoring the reconstruction and testing of the Langley machine by a man with whom the Wrights were locked in a bitter patent fight, and the work was to be overseen by A. F. Zahm, scarcely disinterested. Orville was worried, and anxious to obtain accurate information about the goings-on at Hammondsport.

  Griffith Brewer traveled to Hammondsport on Orville’s behalf in June 1914, just after the bits and pieces of the Aerodrome arrived from Washington. Orville’s staunchest ally throughout the Smithsonian controversy, Brewer first met the brothers in 1908. A short hop with Wilbur at Le Mans gave him the distinction of being the first Englishman to fly. He helped to arrange the production of the first English Wright machines by Short Brothers, and after Wilbur’s death, Orville entrusted him with the task of organizing the English Wright Company.

  Brewer came to Dayton in 1914 to spend three months with Orville and Katharine. He planned to work on a book on the history of the airplane and to complete the requirements for a pilot’s license. It was the first of thirty visits that he would make to Hawthorn Hill and Lambert Island by 1941.

  Orville asked his friend for a favor. As a distinguished representative of the British aeronautical community, Brewer was in a perfect position to request a tour of the facility at Hammondsport, during which he could nose about for information on the Aerodrome project. Brewer agreed, and returned to Dayton with a series of photographs and other information suggesting that Curtiss workmen were making serious alterations to the old Langley machine.9

  A year later, with the reconstruction of the Aerodrome complete and testing under way, Orville dispatched Lorin to the scene, putting him on a train for upstate New York on June 3, 1915. Arriving in Hammondsport the following day, Lorin looked around the Curtiss hangars on Lake Keuka shore and snapped a few photos of the Aerodrome. Up and about early the next morning, he watched through a pair of field glasses as Curtiss pilot Walter Johnson attempted a takeoff with the rebuilt craft. Johnson raced along the surface of the lake for perhaps 330 yards when the rear wings folded up.

  Lorin reached the hangars just as the bedraggled machine was being towed ashore. He immediately began snapping pictures, attracting the attention of a group of workmen in the process. When Johnson confronted him and demanded the exposed film, Lorin had no choice but to comply. Fortunately, many of the changes made in the Aerodrome had already been documented by Brewer, or were visible in the photographs released by the Smithsonian.10

  Orville was not certain how to respond. After the sale of the Wright Company he had no further legal interest in the patent suit and no immediate need to take action over the Langley trials. He was busy with his war work at Dayton-Wright, and concerned about the extent to which anything he said might be misunderstood. “A denial of these [Smithsonian] statements by me might have been looked upon by the public as a jealous attack upon the work of a man [Langley] who was dead,” as he later told Chief Justice William Howard Taft, chairman of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents.11

  Curtiss would undoubtedly have raised the issue had the patent suit been pressed to a conclusion. In 1916–17 he took one more step in that direction, building and flying an aircraft designed by the French experimenter Alexandre Goupil in 1883. As in the case of the Aerodrome, he took considerable liberties in transforming the original design into a flyable airplane.

  The Curtiss lawyers were prepared to argue that the 1914 Aerodrome trials and the tests of the Goupil machine in 1916–17 demonstrated that other experimenters were capable of flight before the Wrights. We will never know how a court might have reacted to that argument. The suit collapsed in 1917 with the creation of a patent pool covering the entire industry, complete with a system of payments to the holders of both the Wright and Curtiss patents.

  The legal issues were resolved by 1921, but Orville was growing more concerned. At the Smithsonian, Walcott and Zahm were busy rewriting the history of the airplane on the basis of the 1914 Hammondsport trials. Their message was clear: The Wrights may have been the first to fly, but Langley had been capable of doing it before them.

  It was apparent that people, from the man on the street to trained engineers who should have known better, were listening. The Literary Digest proclaimed Dr. Langley “Discoverer of the Air,” while L’Aérophile, the single most important aeronautical trade journal, praised the Smithsonian for doing “posthumous justice to a great pioneer.” If Orville did not take action soon, the Smithsonian version would make its way into the history books.

  “It was not until 1921 that I became convinced that the officials of the Smithsonian, at least Dr. Walcott, were fully acquainted with the character of the tests at Hammondsport,” Orville explained. “I had thought up to that time that they might have been ignorant of the fundamental changes which had been incorporated in the machine before these tests were made, and that when these changes were pointed out to them, they would hasten to correct their erroneous reports. They did not do this, but have continued to repeat their earlier statements.”12

  It would not be easy to counter the Smithsonian effort, and Orville was reluctant to involve himself. Fortunately, Griffith Brewer was more than willing to help. On October 20, 1921, he gave a lecture entitled “Aviation’s Greatest Controversy” on the subject of the 1914 Langley tests to the Royal Society of the Arts. Stripping away the propaganda issued by the Smithsonian over the previous eight years, he catalogued the changes made to the 1903 Aerodrome during the first and second episodes of rebuilding at Hammondsport. To most unbiased observers the evidence seemed overwhelming—the 1914 tests had not demonstrated that the 1903 Langley Aerodrome was capable of flight.13

  The Brewer report sparked an immediate reaction. A new crop of articles with such titles as “On a Matter of Fraud” and “The Scandal of the First Man-Carrying Aeroplane” appeared in the press. Aviation leaders who had accepted the Smithsonian assertions at face value were stunned. The English aeronautical engineer Leonard Bairstow spoke for many when he commented that “the Hammondsport trials were not part of the
work of Langley, and in the opinion of many of us were ill-advised.”14

  Although public opinion was swinging in his favor, Orville felt like David battling Goliath. He hoped that Smithsonian officials would retract their false claims for the 1903 Aerodrome and offer a public apology. Instead, Walcott and his staff ignored what was happening. Orville’s attempts to go over Walcott’s head by writing to Chief Justice Taft were no help. The members of the Smithsonian establishment were content to sit quietly until the storm of controversy passed.

  In the end, Orville proved to be a better strategist than either his father or his brother in their legal battles. In the spring of 1925, he announced that he would send the 1903 Wright airplane to the Science Museum of London. The decision created a furor. In response to those who asked him to reconsider, Orville replied:

  I believe that my course in sending our Kitty Hawk machine to a foreign museum is the only way of correcting the history of the flying machine, which by false and misleading statements has been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution. In its campaign to discredit others in the flying art, the Smithsonian has issued scores of these false and misleading statements. They can be proved to be false and misleading from documents. But the people of today do not take the trouble to examine the evidence.

  With this machine in any American museum the national pride would be satisfied; nothing further would be done and the Smithsonian would continue its propaganda. In a foreign museum this machine will be a constant reminder of the reasons for its being there, and after the people and petty jealousies of this day are gone, the historians of the future may examine the evidence impartially and make history accord with it. Your regret that this old machine must leave the country can hardly be so great as my own.15

  Most Americans were not aware that the 1903 Wright airplane was still in existence. Orville himself had scarcely given it any thought until 1916, when Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials asked to exhibit the historic craft as part of the ceremonies marking the opening of two new Institute buildings. He and Jim Jacobs of the Dayton-Wright Company pulled the parts out of the crate and began the job of reconstruction, adding new material only where absolutely necessary to repair the damage that had occurred in 1903.

  The world’s first airplane was displayed at MIT on June 11–13, 1916. Walcott requested the loan of the machine that December, but Orville would no longer consider such an arrangement with the organization that had sponsored the Hammondsport tests. It was shown again at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exhibition at the Grand Central Palace in New York on February 8–15, 1917, and twice more in Dayton during the years 1918–25.

  Sending the 1903 machine to a foreign museum was a stroke of political genius. Orville’s announcement galvanized public attention and put the Smithsonian on the defensive. The world’s first airplane was a national treasure. Ultimately, the National Museum could not allow the craft to remain abroad where it would serve as a perpetual reminder of the controversy. Now Orville could afford to sit and wait.

  Lester Gardner, founder of Aviation, became a spokesman for the Wright cause:

  For many years it has been no secret that the original Wright airplane would not be entrusted to the Smithsonian so long as the influences that had conducted the Langley propaganda in this country were in charge…. But now that Orville Wright has decided to send it to the English Museum the public may awake to some of the damage done by the zeal of Langley’s friends.16

  Secretary Walcott, on the defensive for the first time, attempted to buttress his position. Recognizing that he could no longer base his claim that the Langley Aerodrome had been “capable” of flight solely on the Hammondsport tests, he invited Joseph S. Ames and David Wilson Taylor, both recognized aviation authorities and distinguished members of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, to offer a judgment.

  Ames and Taylor were apparently not provided with a complete list of the changes made to the Aerodrome in 1914. While they admitted that the 1914 machine had been much stronger than that of 1903, they concluded that “structurally the original Langley machine was capable of level and controlled flight.” They argued that, although the Wrights “were the first to navigate the air,” Langley, “after years of effort, following a different road, was in sight of the same goal.”17

  Orville Wright disagreed, as did most of the rest of the American aeronautical community and the qualified engineers who have examined the craft since that time. But Walcott, resting his case on the report, refused to budge.

  Charles D. Walcott died in 1927. His successor, Charles Greeley Abbot, reduced the label on the Aerodrome to read: “Langley Aerodrome—The Original Langley Flying Machine of 1903, Restored.” Moreover, in 1928 the Smithsonian Board of Regents passed a resolution declaring that “to the Wrights belongs the credit of making the first successful flight with a power-propelled, heavier-than-air machine carrying a man.” The resolution was meaningless. No one, not even Walcott, had questioned the Wrights priority in having made the first flight. The controversy involved the capability of the Langley machine to fly.

  Charles Abbot and Orville met and corresponded, seeking a solution that would satisfy Orville without unduly embarrassing the Smithsonian. Speaking in Washington on December 17, 1933, Abbot suggested the creation of a committee to mediate the differences between them, and proposed that Charles Lindbergh should head the group. Orville accepted, spelling out his understanding of the arrangement.

  He suggested that the work of the committee should be limited to a study of the specific problem, that is, the Smithsonian claim that the 1914 Hammondsport tests had demonstrated the capability of the 1903 Aerodrome for flight. If the committee judged that the machine was so capable, Orville would bring the 1903 Wright airplane home. If Wright was vindicated, however, he would expect the Smithsonian to “rectify the offenses committed by it in the past in its own publications by printing full corrections in these same publications. These corrections shall be unequivocal, and shall be given a prominence and circulation equal to that given to the former statements of which they are a correction, so that in the future the matters involved can not be misunderstood.”18

  Lindbergh, anxious to help, met with Abbot and Wright independently in January 1934. He told both men that he believed the first step should be to establish the basic facts in the case. He asked Orville Wright to begin the process by preparing a statement of the important differences between the 1903 Aerodrome and the machine flown at Hammondsport in 1914.

  Lindbergh met with Abbot again in late January. In a letter describing that meeting to Orville Wright, Abbot said that Lindbergh feared he would not be able to devote enough time to the problems involved, and suggested that the Secretaries of War, Navy, and Commerce each be asked to name an individual to serve on a committee to weigh the evidence. Abbot then proposed that this committee be asked to address five specific questions:

  1. In what ways was the 1914 machine similar to the 1903 Aerodrome?

  2. In what ways was it different?

  3. What bearing did the 1914 tests have on a determination of the capacity of the 1903 machine to fly?

  4. What bearing did the flights of Langley’s models in 1896 and 1903 have on the determination of the capacity of the full-scale 1903 Aerodrome to fly?

  5. What other facts, if any, would assist in determining the capacity of the 1903 Aerodrome to fly?

  Orville was not willing to accept such a committee. Each of the Secretaries, he noted, already had some official connection with the Smithsonian. He left unspoken the obvious fact that he should have an opportunity to participate in the selection process. Moreover, he believed that Abbot’s proposed charge to the group was much too broad. Orville was really interested in only two things: a published list of the differences between the 1903 Aerodrome and the 1914 Hammondsport machine, and an admission by the Smithsonian that the craft was heavily modified.19

  Orville then proceeded as if the committee proposal had never been ma
de. He sent Lindbergh a list based on Griffith Brewer’s 1921 paper, with the specific dimensions of the 1903 Langley Aerodrome on one side of the page and those of the 1914 machine on the other, so that any reader could see the differences at a glance.

  Lindbergh passed this list on to Abbot who, finding no substantial errors, proposed that it be published as part of a long article which would include:

  1. An account of Langley’s work up to 1903.

  2. A history of the Aerodrome from 1903 to 1914.

  3. Republication of Zahm’s original article of 1914.

  4. Orville’s comparison of the 1903 and 1914 machines.

  5. Zahm’s notes on Orville’s list of changes.

  6. The facts relating to the subsequent exhibition of the 1903 machine since 1914.

  Once again, Orville demurred. Abbot was suggesting that his simple comparison of the 1903 and 1914 machines be buried in a mass of extraneous material, including a republication of the offending article that launched the controversy in the first place. On March 15, 1935, he wrote to Abbot outlining in clear and precise terms the sort of article that might lead to the return of the 1903 Wright Flyer.20

  Instead of a paper such as you have proposed may I offer the following suggestion: That the Smithsonian publish a paper presenting a list of specifications in parallel columns of those features of the Langley machine of 1903 and the Hammondsport machine of 1914, in which there were differences, with an introduction stating that the Smithsonian now finds that it was misled by the Zahm report of 1914; that through the Zahm paper the Institution was led to believe that the aeroplane tested at Hammondsport was “as nearly as possible in its original condition”; that as a result of this misinformation the Smithsonian had published erroneous statements from time to time alleging that the original Langley machine, without modification, or with only such modifications as were necessary for the addition of floats, had been successfully flown at Hammondsport in 1914; that it ask its readers to disregard all of its former statements and expressions of opinion regarding the flights at Hammondsport in 1914, because these were based on misinformation as the list to follow will show. The list and specifications are to be agreed upon by the Smithsonian, Colonel Lindbergh and myself.21