Wright Brothers – Honoring the Wright Brothers

The newspapers on September 14, 1908 announced: “Wright Brothers to get $1,000 Medals.”

The article went on to say that “in formal recognition of their recent remarkable achievements in aeronautics, the Aero Club of America, the representative organization of the United States, will hold a banquet in New York in honor of Wilbur and Orville Wright, the two Americans whose aeroplane has been the wonder and admiration of two continents.”

“This was decided at a meeting of the club held yesterday when active plans were begun. On that night the organization, whose membership includes many millionaires, will present both brothers with a handsome medal, costing $1,000.”

“This is intended to denote the celebration of America’s gift of the aeroplane to the world by the Wrights, who are members of the club.”

“The drawings of the medals are now on exhibition in the club rooms. Half a dozen leading silversmiths have entered a competition, the choice of design to be made by the members of a special committee.”

“The banquet will not be held for several weeks. Orville Wright is recovering in Dayton, Ohio from injuries sustained in the government test in Washington, but the officials of the club expect he will be able to attend. Wilbur Wright is in France and he has sent assurances that he will come to New York if possible.”

“The directors of the Aero Club have appointed a committee to raise subscriptions and among the prominent members to contribute are John Jacob Astor, Chester R. Flint, Jefferson Seligman, Frank A. Munsey, Samuel H. Valentine, Russell A. Alger and J. C. McCoy.”

Members of the Auto Club of America founded the Aero Club in New York. Alexander Graham Bell was its most famous member. Most members were millionaire sportsman. Wilbur and Orville joined the club in 1906.

The award ceremony did not take place as planned. It was delayed until June 1909 because Wilbur was busy flying in Europe and Orville was conducting qualification flights for the Army at Ft. Myer.

When the officials found out that the Wrights were returning to New York from Europe in May 1909, they wanted to stage a major homecoming celebration that would include in addition to the Aero Club, the U.S. Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Congressman Herbert Parsons invited President Taft to present the medals.

When Governor Cox of Ohio heard about the plans he protested to the planners that Dayton had already planned a major celebration in Dayton during June.

President Taft was asked to decide the issue. Taft deferred to the Wrights. The Wrights were still at sea on their way home. They told the parties involved that they had much work to do getting ready for the upcoming Army trials and would prefer to celebrate in Dayton.

President Taft said he was unable to attend the celebration in Dayton and invited the Wrights to make a short trip to Washington for award of the gold medals in the White House. The Wrights accepted the invitation.

Dayton picked June 17-18 for their grand celebration. The Wrights reluctantly agreed to participate although they would have preferred to spend the time working on their airplane

President Taft agreed to present the Aero Club medals in Washington at the White House during the second week of June.

Wilbur, Orville and Katharine arrived by train in Washington on the morning of the June 10 and were welcomed by Holland Forbes, president of the Aero Club. He escorted them to a suite of rooms at the Willard Hotel. Many people thought Forbes was Wilbur because Wilbur had been in France and was less familiar than Orville who had been in Washington in connection with the Army trials.

The next stop for Wilbur and Orville was the War Department where they met with the man who would make the decision in the near future whether the Wright Flyer would meet the Army’s specifications, Brigadier General James Allen, Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army. The Wrights had interrupted working on the airplane for the trip to Washington.

Katharine, during the time her brothers were at the War Department, was attending a reception at the home of Mrs. C. J. Bell, wife of the treasurer of the Aero Club of Washington.

From there the Wrights and their escorts walked through downtown Washington to the Cosmos club for lunch. The walk must have been difficult for Orville who had just recently discarded his cane, which he was using while he recovered from the serious injuries he had as a result of the crash he had at Ft. Myer the previous year. The accident left him with one leg shorter than the other and back pains which would bother him the rest of his life.

The Cosmos Club was an all-male club whose membership consisted of important members of society in Washington. Orville stayed there the previous year while flying at Ft. Myer. (I have had lunch there several times myself as a guest.)

The club suspended their all-male rule for the occasion so that Katharine and the other ladies could be present.

Alex Graham Bell and the leaders of congress were among the 159 guests in attendance.

After lunch, the entire party walked across Lafayette Square to the White House where they joined other invited quests in the East Room. Promptly at 2:40, the great double doors to the central hallway were opened and Holland Forbes and Representative Herbert Parsons escorted Wilbur, Orville and Katharine into the East Room.

Forbes made a few remarks on the behalf of Aero Club and then turned the proceedings over to President Taft. The President prefaced his presentation of the gold medals with a humorous comment. He assured the audience that, while his own girth would keep him on the ground, he shared the universal interest in flight. He followed that with saying that the work of Wright brothers was something in which all Americans could take pride.

He continued, “You made this discovery by a course that we of America feel is distinctly American, by keeping your nose right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to do.”

The Wrights quickly returned to Dayton to get their new Flyer ready for the Army speed trial. They did get a one-month extension to July 28 from General Allen while they were in Washington. Later, it was extended again for three days during the trials because of high winds.

Back in Dayton, they were committed to another grand celebration, June 17-18, which would further take away from their work on the Flyer. They were not pleased with another delay but there wasn’t much they could do about it except smile and participate.

Returning to Ft. Myer, Orville successfully completed the speed test with an average speed of 42.6-mph over a ten-mile route between Alexandria and Ft. Myer. President Taft was present for this flight and one other.

It would be interesting to know what Wilbur and Orville really thought about President Taft, who was a fellow native of Ohio. He certainly wasn’t of much help to them during the period that the Wrights were trying to interest the War Department in their airplane while Taft was Secretary of War.

In 1905 the Wrights wrote to Taft through their local congressman. Taft’s office routinely forwarded the letter to the U.S. Army Board of Ordnance and Fortification for comment. The Board treated the Wrights’ letter as if it came from cranks. Their reply was negative and insulting. Orville and Wilbur were very upset because it demonstrated a lack of respect.

In 1906 the Wrights tried again, writing directly to Taft. Again the answer was negative.

In early 1907 new hope appeared. Cortland Field, the president of the Aero Club was the brother-in-law of Congressman Herbert Parsons. Field told Parsons about the problems that the Wrights were having with the U.S. government. Parsons in turn wrote to the Wrights in April asking them to send copies of the correspondence that they had received from the Board of Ordnance and Fortification.

Parsons, after reading what the Wrights sent him, was appalled and decided to bring the issue to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. The president in turn forwarded the package Parsons sent him to Secretary of War Taft with a note to have the claims investigated. Taft sent the Wright package along with the notes from Parsons and Roosevelt, recommending a favorable response.

The secretary of the board wrote the Wrights in May requesting additional information and a specific proposal. The Board added they wanted assurance of exclusive rights to the invention. The Wrights, who were negotiating with other potential buyers in Europe, responded that was no longer possible. The Wrights heard nothing more from the Board until October.

Then an event occurred that would finally start the ball rolling to a successful conclusion. The event was the assignment of Lt. Frank Lahm to take command of a portion of the aeronautical section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Lt. Lahm wrote a letter to General James Allen, Chief Signal Officer and the highest member of the Army Board. The letter said: “I have to inform you that I have just had an interview with Mr. Orville Wright of Dayton Ohio, in regard to the purchase of the aeroplane invented and successfully operated by himself and his brother, Mr. Wilbur Wright. It seems unfortunate that this American invention, which unquestionably has considerable military value, should not first be acquired by the United States Army.”

It was just a matter of time. On February 10, the Wright brothers received notice from Allen of the acceptance of their bid on a Flyer for the War Department.

The Wrights were involved in one other episode with Taft in which Taft was not helpful. This one involved a controversy with the Smithsonian Institution in which the Smithsonian claimed that the Langley Aerodrome, which crashed twice before the Wrights successful first flight, was capable of flight and would have flown if it hadn’t experienced launching problems beyond Langley’s control.

The Smithsonian was interested in redeeming Samuel Langley’s reputation because he was a former secretary of the Smithsonian. Charles Walcott, the current secretary, sponsored Glenn Curtiss to rebuild and fly the original Aerodrome and thereby prove the claim that the Aerodrome could have flown.

Curtiss had an interest in invalidating the Wrights’ patent because he was building airplanes that were covered by the patent. Curtiss claims he did get the pontoons of the Aerodrome just above the surface of Lake Keuka in 1914. The Aerodrome however was not in its original condition. Curtiss had made significant modifications to the machine.

After the Curtiss flight, Walcott ordered the Aerodrome returned to it original condition and then displayed in the Smithsonian with a sign that read, “it was the first man carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight.”

Orville appealed to now Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who was also chancellor of the Smithsonian to make an impartial investigation of the Aerodrome affair.

Orville wrote, ” I do not think it will take you five minutes to make up your mind whether the changes were made and whether they were of importance.”

Taft replied that his duties as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court left him no time to decide questions that should be decided by the secretary of the Smithsonian, not the chancellor.

This complicity between Curtiss and the Smithsonian drove Orville to send the 1903 Flyer to the London Science Museum in January 1928. The Flyer didn’t return to the United States until 20 years later after the Smithsonian admitted in one of its technical publications that significant modifications had been made to the Aerodrome.

In contrast to Taft, the Aero Club remained a solid supporter of the Wrights. One of their actions was to announce on April 21, 1910 that the Aero Club had agreed to sanction air meets only after prior arrangements had been made by the Wright brothers. This was a bold action because many Wright competitors tried to avoid paying royalties to the Wrights and charged the Wrights with discouraging innovation by enforcing the patent they were awarded in 1906.

An unfortunate event occurred at the first large Aero Club American Exposition illustrating the history, status and future prospects of the flying machine. The Wrights provided for display a crankshaft and flywheel from the 1903 Flyer. Someone stole them and they have not reappeared to this day.

In 1978 there was a grand celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Wright brothers first flight. One of the best-published tributes appeared in the Airline Pilot magazine’s issue of December 1978. The following is what they wrote:

“The Wright Brothers: Proponents of Free Enterprise.

In this issue, a special 75th anniversary tribute to the Wright brothers from all airline pilots, we have tried to show what manner of men they were and record some of the little-known facts about their invention and the significance of their accomplishment. So much is known about them, yet so little.

They were private people who shunned publicity for publicity’s sake. The were determined to stand up for their rights and did, in spite of the dogged efforts of those who would defraud them or detract from the enormity of their achievement.

It is with much awe that we realize that these two quiet geniuses were the ones who made the technological breakthrough that gave the world a whole new mode of transportation and an entire industry that employs thousands of people around the world.

And they did it without the benefit of a completed high school education, financial backing or the precedent of other technology. They were mere bicycle mechanics who had the same dream many others had before them — that man could fly in controllable heavier-than-air machines and do it safely.

The difference was that they realized their dream through scientific inquiry, by gathering their own facts and by applying their self-won knowledge to kites, then gliders and then aeroplanes. They purchased all their materials with their own funds and what they could not buy, they scrounged. And what was not available in any form, they fashioned with their own hands and homemade tools. They continually improvised as they patiently proceeded, fully convinced that it was within their power to succeed even though the realization of the dream had eluded others for centuries.

When success did come, they found that they had to turn from the engineering/test phase to the marketing phase of their new enterprise. They found that selling their new product was difficult, that it had to become known to the public before it would be in demand. Ironically, they became better known overseas than in their own country until they proved the worth of their product by personal demonstration.

Before Wilbur died, the brothers became aircraft manufacturers and thus entrepreneurs in the full sense of the word. They managed a profitable enterprise and assumed the economic risks of a new and untried business. After Wilbur’s death, Orville continued, although with a low profile and seemingly without the inventive spark that their twin genius had given them.

These two Americans, products of a free society, in defiance of the failures of others, were able to solve the riddle of controlled, heavier-than-air flight without the benefit of government subsidy or official encouragement. Exercising their right to think independently and proceed into the technological unknown with confidence, they epitomized the American system at its finest.

They sought neither fame nor fortune yet attained both. They did not envision great fleets of aircraft traversing the globe or new industries and professions rising from the sands of Kitty Hawk, yet both have come about.

All of us owe the Wright brothers a debt we cannot hope to repay. We can only memorialize the men and their genius as we have tried to do in these pages. We know they would understand.”

The death of Wilbur Wright on Wednesday, May 29, 1912 at the relatively young age of 45 ended the productive output of the Wright brother’s team of Wilbur and Orville. Orville lost his motivation to continue the Wright Airplane Company and sold it in October of 1915. At the time, the Wright airplane was already losing it aeronautical technology edge.

His death was front-page news around the world. The following historic article that appeared in The New York Globe contains a detailed description of Wilbur’s death. In addition, at the end of the article are some interesting comments from Wilbur about what role birds and the bicycle played in inventing the airplane. His comments seem to contradict some commonly held beliefs.

Here’s the article:

Man Who First Conquered the Air and Led the Way in the Aeronautic Marvels of the Last Decade Succumbs to Typhoid — Members of His Family at Bedside When End Came Early today — They Hoped to the End.

Dayton, May 30. — With the world watching, hoping that he might win, Wilbur Wright early today lost his gallant fight for life. He died at 3:15 in the morning. Not until his physician uttered the final syllable of the last word did his loyal brother, constant companion and sharer in his world triumphs, give up hope.

“He will recover. He must get well,” Orville Wright said over and over through the long night. But that parching fever, a temperature of 105.9, just a little under that of the birds he had rivaled, safe to them but death to him, told the physicians that the end was fast approaching.

About midnight he had rallied, his pulse fell steadily to nearly normal, and his respiration was hardly more than twenty. But the fever raged on, and shortly afterward there came a sinking spell, from which he never rallied.

Wright had been lingering on the border for many days, and though his condition from time to time gave some hopes to members of his family the attending physicians, Drs. D. B. Conklin and Levi Spitler, maintained throughout the latter part of his sickness that he could not recover. When the noted patient succumbed to the burning fever that had been racking his body for days and nights he was surrounded by the members of his family, which included his aged father, Bishop Milton Wright, Miss Catherine (should be spelled Katharine) Wright, Orville, the co-inventor of the aeroplane; Reuchlin Wright and Lorin Wright. All of the family resides in this city except Reuchlin, who lives in Kansas.

ALARMING SYSTEMS.

The most alarming systems in Wright’s sickness developed yesterday shortly before noon, when his fever suddenly mounted from 104 up to 106 and then quickly subsided to its former stage. At this juncture of the crisis the patient was seized with chills, and the attending physicians were baffled by the turn of events. Chills were unusual in a patient suffering from fever this high, and the doctors at Wright’s bedside were puzzled. The condition of the aviator remained unchanged throughout the rest of the day, and there was no improvement up until last midnight. Then Wright began to show an improvement, and the watchers at this bedside were reassured. After resting for a few hours after last midnight Wright took a sudden turn for the worse and his principal physician, Dr. D. B. Conklin, was called. The doctor arrived at 3:25 and learned that Wright had breathed his last a few minutes before.

The noted patient was seized with typhoid on May 4 while on a business trip in the east. On that day he returned to Dayton from Boston and consulted Dr. Conklin, the family physician. He took to his bed almost immediately, and it was several days before his case was definitely diagnosed as typhoid. Throughout the early part of his illness Wright attributed his sickness to some fish he had eaten at a Boston hotel. He explained to his physician, however, that he had no particular reason to believe that the disease originated from this source.

Arrangements for the funeral of the aviator had not been completed early today.

HIS BRILLIANT CAREER

Wilbur Wright, the elder of the two brothers, was perhaps the better known. It was he whose spectacular flights in France during 1908 opened the eyes of Europe to the flying machines which the two brothers had been perfecting at their home in Dayton, Ohio, and among the sand dunes of the coast of North Carolina.

Wilbur Wright was born near Millville, Indiana, April 16, 1867, and was therefore forty-five years old. He went to the high schools of Richmond, Ind., and Dayton, Ohio, to which city his father moved and stayed four years. It was in 1903 that Wilbur Wright, with his brother Orville, began to devote his time and attention to the effort to make a heavier than air flying machine. It has taken less than nine years to build the airship from a crude machine to one which will fly many hundreds of miles and remain in the air for hours. The Wrights have been recognized officially in the $30,000 payment for an aeroplane made to them in 1909 by the War Department. In the same year the French Academy of Sciences awarded Wilbur Wright a gold medal.

All the success won by the brothers did not alienate them from their Dayton home and workshop. When Wilbur Wright was here in 1908, some time before the success of the aeroplane was generally acknowledged, he was asked how much the study of bird flight had benefited the two in their studies of the air.

“Birds taught us nothing,” said he. “Birds and aeroplanes are far different. There couldn’t be much more difference. A bird flying and a flying machine that can carry a man present two vastly different subjects. We worked out our plans as to flying. After we got into the air we watched the birds. After we were tauAght by the air we could understand why birds did certain things during their flights. We learned why a bird suddenly drops and rises, and why the different positions of the bird when flying. In fact, we learned a great many things that we didn’t know before.”

He went on to deny that he had obtained ideas from the bicycle. The parts of a bicycle, said he, are rigid. The parts of an aeroplane must not be. End

Comment: Concerning Wilbur’s statement on birds, Wilbur did sit along the Miami River south of Dayton in a place called the Pinnacles and observe birds flying. In his notes of 1900 he wrote, “The buzzard that uses the dihedral angle (V- shaped) finds greater difficulty to maintain equilibrium in strong winds than eagles and hawks which hold their wings level.”

The Wrights would remember that observation in designing the 1903 Flyer. The Flyer had wings that drooped like an eagle in what is known as the anhedral configuration.

Flying like an eagle with drooping wing tips may have worked for their 1903 machine, but they later used the dihedral at Huffman Prairie for their 1904 and 1905 and later machines.

With regard to the bicycle, bicycle manufacturing turned out to be the ideal preparation for engineering an airplane. Their design incorporated bicycle parts such as the oversized sprocket and chain that drove the propellers, a body frame structure similar to the tubular steel double-triangle frames used in their bicycles, and in the chain that was used in the wing warping linkage.

There were other bicycle-related uses. They lay on the wing instead of sitting upright in order to reduce drag similar to bicycle riders while racing. They used two modified bicycle hubs as wheels on the unattached dolly that was used to ride the launching monorail during takeoff. The twisting of a bicycle inner tube box resulted in developing the structural solution for implementing wing warping.

Their bicycle business provided them with the machine tools and skills for building their gliders and airplanes. They learned to work with sprockets, spikes, metals, lathes and drills.

Lastly, they knew that one had to learn how to fly an airplane, the way one learns to ride a bicycle — learning to balance through constant practice.

We don’t know what questions the reporter asked, nor their context. That could answer why Wilbur gave the answers he did.

Frank Coffyn has spent many hours flying Wright airplanes and so is highly qualified to comment on their flying characteristics. His flights call into question the often heard claim that the Wright machines are difficult to fly.

In 1911 he wrote, “I flew a plane (Model B) the other day from Mines Field, Los Angles to my home near San Diego that practically handled itself, so perfect was its balance and equipment.

In 1912 he said that the Wright Model B “stood up nobly under the buffeting of stiffer winds than it had ever before encountered” while flying over New York City.

One of the best descriptions of flying in the Model B piloted by Coffyn was by Richard Harding Davis in a 1911 Collier’s Magazine. Davis was a celebrated war correspondent and novelist. Colliers commissioned him to describe a flight.

He showed he wasn’t too confident about flying when he gave two of his friends his ring, watch and money to hold for him.

Here is portion of the article.

I crawled between a crisscross of wires to a seat as small as a racing saddle, and with my right hand choked the life out of a wooden upright. Unless I clung to Coffyn’s right arm, there was nothing I could hold on to with my left but the edge of the racing saddle.

My toes rested on a thin steel crossbar. It was like balancing in a child’s swing hung from a tree. Had I placed myself in such a seat on a hotel porch, I would have considered my position most unsafe; to occupy such a seat a thousand feet in mid-air while moving at fifty miles an hour struck me as ridiculous.

“What’s to keep me from falling out?” I demanded.

Coffyn laughed unfeelingly.

“You won’t fall out!” he said.

I began to hate Coffyn and the Wright Brothers. I began to regret I had not been brought up a family man so that, like the other men of family at Aiken, I could explain I could not go aloft, because I had children to support.

Behind us the propeller was thrashing the air like a mowing machine, and Coffyn had disguised himself in his goggles. To me the act suggested the judge putting on his black cap before he delivers the death sentence. The moment had come. I tried to smile at my two faithful friends, but one was excitedly dancing around taking a farewell snapshot, and the other already was calmly counting my money.

On the bicycle wheels we ran swiftly forward across the polo field. There was no swaying, no vibration, no jar. We might have been speeding over asphalt in a soft-cushioned automobile. We reached the boundary of the polo field.

“You are in the air!” said Coffyn.

I did not believe him, and I looked down to see, and found the earth was two feet below us. We were moving through space on as even a keel as though we were touching the level turf.

Coffyn had his own sense of humor. Perhaps first with a glance he assured himself that my feet were wrapped around the steel bar and my fingers clutching the wooden upright. Perhaps he did not. In any event, when we were a thousand feet in the air, about as high as a twelve-story building, he pulled a lever and the airship dived!

The next instant a perfectly solid red clay road was rising to hit me in the face. Not even my feet obstructed my view. We were tilted so far forward that I knew my face and knees would hit at the same moment. I knew the end had come. I had time only to think that what had been Coffyn and what had been me would make a terrible mess in the red clay road.

And then when it was so near that I shut my eyes, Coffyn pulled another lever, and like a rocket, the airship shot into the skies.

Probably many times you dream you are falling from a great height and wake to find yourself in bed. Pile all the agony of all these nightmares into one, and that was how I felt.

When I looked at Coffyn he was laughing. My only desire was to punch him, just once on the tip of his square jaw. The only reason I did not was because I was afraid to let go of the wooden upright.

Coffyn said later that Davis never suggested another flight.

I flew in a modern replica of the Model B in Dayton and I thought it was a lot of fun. Of course my pilot didn’t make any steep dives to test me out and they had added a seatbelt which I wore.

The Wright Model B Flyer was the first airplane that the Wright brothers produced in quantity, with more than 100 built beginning in 1910.