Wright Brothers – Wright Contemporaries

Charlie Taylor was an indispensable third member of the Wright Brother’s team. It was he who built the custom gasoline engine that powered the first flight at Kitty

Hawk in 1903.

Charlie went to work for Wilbur and Orville on June 15, 1901. It was the beginning of a long-term association between Charlie and the brothers, both as an employee and a friend.

Charlie had dropped into the Wrights’ bicycle shop one evening for a visit. Wilbur asked him if he would like to work for them. Charlie asked, “how much will you pay?”

Wilbur replied, “$18 a week.” That was more than the 5 cents an hour that Charlie was making at the Dayton Electric Company, so he said he would take the job.

With the hiring of Charlie, Orville and Wilbur could now go to Kitty Hawk before the end of the summer when the bicycle business dropped off.

The hiring of Taylor was the recognition by the brothers that they were serious about pursuing their “hobby” of flying. They could now keep up their bicycle business and simultaneously pursue their hobby.

Charlie was on the job for only three weeks when the brothers took off for Kitty Hawk. They left Charlie in total charge of the bicycle shop which included handling all

the money. That was a sure sign the brothers had complete trust in him. Their trust was to be amply rewarded.

The brothers were pleased, but not Katharine, their sister. She didn’t like Charlie’s smoking and frequent use of profanity.

Began Work on Flight

When the brothers returned from Kitty Hawk that year, they knew that the published aerodynamic data on wing lift was in error and that they would have to create

their own. They put Charlie to work building a wind tunnel for that purpose. This was the first job Charlie was assigned that had anything to do with airplanes.

The redesigned wings based on the data derived from the wind tunnel experiments proved to be successful during the Wrights’ experiments at Kitty Hawk in 1902.

Now they needed an engine to power the aircraft. Failing to find a company that would build the engine, the Wrights decided to build one themselves. (One company

did offer to build a one cylinder engine that lacked power and was too heavy.)

Charlie started making the engine in the winter of 1902 and finished it in six weeks following sketches provided by the Wrights. He only had rudimentary equipment to

work with which consisted of a drill press, a lathe and hand tools, but that wasn’t an obstacle for Charlie.

The engine produced 12 horsepower, 4 horsepower more that the target design. The additional horsepower enabled the Wrights to strengthen the wings and framework of the Flyer.

The engine was relatively simple. Fuel flows by gravity from a can into a reservoir in the top of the crankcase, where it vaporizes and mixes with air flowing into the

cylinders. Instead of spark plugs, it has igniters that close like switches when a cam turns, then spark as they separate.

The crankcase was contracted out and was made of Alcoa aluminum.

Building the engine was an amazing accomplishment for Charlie. Although he had limited formal education and little experience with engines, he had a natural aptitude for working with machines.

Charlie worked steadily for the Wrights for the next 10 years as their chief mechanic. He was with them in Europe; with Wilbur during his extraordinary flight circuiting

the Statue of Liberty; at Fort Myers for the Army trials and many other locations. He could claim he was the first airport manager after managing Huffman Field in

Dayton where many of the brothers’ flight experiments were conducted.

The “Vin Fiz”

He left his job with the Wrights in 1911 to be the mechanic for Calbraith Perry Rodgers, who planned to be the first to fly an airplane, named the Vin Fiz, across the U.S. The airplane was a Wright built machine and Charlie knew how to maintain Wright airplanes.

Rodgers wouldn’t have successfully accomplished his goal without Taylor. Along the way the airplane crashed 16 times and was repaired so many times by Charlie that little was left of the original airplane by the time it arrived in California.

Continued Involvement with the Wrights

Charlie continued to work for the Wrights in their Dayton factory and stayed with Orville after Orville sold the factory and retired in 1915. Charlie helped Orville with his continuing experiments and kept his automobile running.

In 1916 Charlie helped restore the original 1903 Flyer for public display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. This was the first public exhibition

of the airplane and for the first time Orville realized that the Flyer was a valuable artifact that should be preserved.

Charlie left Orville’s employment and moved to California in 1928 where he worked in a machine shop and invested in real estate. The timing was bad. The Depression struck and Charlie lost his investment and his job.

In 1937, Henry Ford hired Charlie to help restore the original Wright bicycle shop and home. Ford was moving the buildings from Dayton to his Greenfield Village

museum at Dearborn, Michigan. Charlie stayed with Ford until 1941 when he returned to California and found work in a defense factory.

Tragedy and Redemption

In 1945, Charlie had a heart attack and never worked again. He eventually ended up in a hospital charity ward.

An enterprising reporter found him there and published an article describing his sorry status. As a result of the publicity, the aviation industry quickly raised funds to

move him to a private sanitarium where he died at the age of 88 in 1956. He is buried in a mausoleum dedicated to aviation pioneers in Los Angeles.

While Orville was alive (he died in 1948), Orville wrote Charlie regularly, including every Dec. 17, commemorating the anniversary of the first flight.

In his last note Orville wrote: “I hope you are well and enjoying life: but that’s hard to imagine when you haven’t much work to do.” It was signed “Orv.”

The October 5, 1896 of the St. John, New Brunswick Daily Sun contained a article titled, A Real Negro Poet; Surprising Gifts of Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

This historic 1896 article is reproduced below:

First, some background.

Dunbar and Orville Wright were classmates at Central High School in Dayton, Ohio. They knew each other well. Paul helped Orville with his writing and literature assignments and Orville helped Paul with math and science.

Orville began a printing business while still in high school and was the first to print Dunbar’s writings including advertising flyers and tickets for poetry recitals. One

was a neighborhood newspaper edited by Dunbar named the Dayton Tattler.

Dunbar’s book of poems, Majors and Minors, came to the attention of William Dean Howells, a novelist and critic and the dean of late 19th century American letters.

Howell’s praise of the book in the Harper’s Review launched Dunbar into the big time among literary circles.

Dunbar often wrote and spoke about civil rights issues and was friends with other famous black leaders including Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B.

DuBois.

Here is the 1896 article:

“At last an intellectual bridge has been cast across the chasm dividing the black from the white race! At last, for the first time in the history of this country – or so far

as we are aware, in the history of any other country – a man of pure African blood has arisen to speak for his people in the person of Mr. Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

For several years poems bearing this name have been appearing in the leading magazines, but they bore on the surface no racial mark, and the fact that some of them

were in the Negro dialect counted for nothing since many white writers have attempted that, although with less success. It was not, therefore, until a slender, quiet,

shabby little volume of verse, dateless, placeless and without a publisher, drifted out of the west and accidentally reached Mr. Howells – who is always quick to see

and never reluctant to praise what is really good – that the young African-American poet was introduced to the larger audience which the importance of his work

deserved.

Only then did it become generally known that the author was black, that his parents were slaves who learned to read after they were free, and that he himself had

stood shoulder to shoulder with the heaviest laden of his race. He was educated in the public schools of his birthplace, Dayton, Ohio and was until recently an elevator

boy.

As these facts came out the significance of Mr. Dunbar’s poetry stood revealed, and it was recognized not only for its intrinsic worth, for its lyrical beauty and metrical

quality, which are quite enough to lift into prominence, but as the first authoritative utterance of the inner life of a race which had hitherto been dumb.

The little book thus voicing what had never been before spoken was privately printed and called “Majors and Minors,” the Majors being in English, and the Minors in

dialect, sometimes the dialect of the Middle-South negroes and sometimes of the Middle-South whites, and in the case of negro dialect reproduced with a perfection

that no white writer has attained.

These poems, covering a wide range of thought and feeling, have been gathered with a number of new poems into a much larger volume soon to be published by

Dodd, Mead & Co.

Mr. Howells has written an introduction to the new work (Lyrics of a Lowly Life), and in it he says:

“What struck me in reading Mr. Dunbar’s poetry was what had already struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana, in Kentucky and Illinois. They had felt as I felt, that

however gifted his race had proven in music, in oratory, in several other arts, here was the first instance of an American negro who had evinced innate literature.

In my criticism of his book I had alleged Dumas in France, and had forgotten to allege the far greater Pushkin in Russia; but these were both mulattos, who might have

been supposed to derive their qualities from white blood vastly more artistic than ours, and who were the creatures of an environment more favorable to their literary

development.

So far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar was the only man of pure African blood and American civilization to feel the negro life aesthetically and express it lyrically. It

seemed to me that this had come to its most modern consciousness in him, and that his brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American negro

objectively, and to have represented him as he found him to be, with humor, with sympathy, and yet with what the reader must instinctively feel to be entire

truthfulness.

I said a race which had come to this effect in any member of it had attained civilization in him, and I permitted myself the imaginative prophecy that the hostilities and

the prejudices which had so long constrained his race were destined to vanish in the arts; that these were to be the final proof that God had made of one blood all

nations of men.

I thought his merits positive and not comparative; and I held that if his black poems had been written by a white man I should not have found them less admirable. I

accepted them as an evidence of the essential unity of the human race, which does not think or feel black in one and white in another, but humanly in all.”

It is a curious fact that until the acceptance of his book Dunbar had never earned any money by his literary work. After high school he couldn’t find work so he had to

settle for the position of elevator boy at the Callahan building in downtown Dayton. He earned $4 per week. The few books he wrote and which gave him a reputation

were published at the expense of himself and his friends, and brought him no immediate profit.

His rise has been a hard struggle with discouraging conditions. When the acceptance of his new book of poems was announced it was accompanied by a sum of $400.

This amount was in the form of four crisp $100 bills of the new design. The poet had never been the possessor of so much money in his life, and its unexpected receipt

sent him into a state of ecstasy. His success, however, has not made any change for the worse in the simple and unaffected youth, who until recently guided the

destinies of an elevator.”

Dunbar developed pneumonia and died at the young age of 34 on February 9, 1906. The City Fathers of Dayton offered to bury Paul in Library Park stipulating that he

would be the only person interned there. His mother, wanting to rest by her son, declined and he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery adjacent to his friends the Wright

Brothers.”

The Paul Laurence Dunbar House in Dayton has been designated one of 31 National  Poetry Landmarks by the Academy of American Poets.

Laverne Sci, director of the Dunbar House State Memorial at 219 N. Paul Lawrence Dunbar St., said the selection puts Dunbar “in some wonderful company. I am

delighted at recognition for him that is both overdue and comes at a wonderful time.” (Dayton Daily News 08/05/2004)

Also see: Paul Lawrence Dunbar: The Wright Brothers Friend

The Wright Brothers were quintessential practitioners of ethical behavior. That is more than can be said about some others involved in the nascent airplane industry.

Augustus M. Herring is one such unsavory character who popped in and out of the Wright Brothers’ life.

Herring was an unpleasant man with a big ego who fancied himself as a great inventor in the field of aviation. His boasts were often designed to deceive others.

Herring was born in Georgia in 1865. He matriculated to Steven Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, to study Mechanical Engineering but never graduated.

Herring told people that he didn’t graduate because the faculty thought his thesis on flight was “fanciful.” In truth he failed to complete the thesis he was writing on the subject of a marine steam engine, not flight.

Orville and Wilbur Wright first met Herring in 1902 during their glider experiments at Kitty Hawk. The Wrights were there to test their new glider that they had designed using the data from their recent wind tunnel experiments.

Octave Chanute, a aeronautical enthusiast and friend of the Wrights, was also there to test two of his gliders. Chanute brought Herring with him to assemble and fly the gliders.

Octave Chanute

Octave Chanute was a retired consulting engineer for a number of railroads, a construction engineer and one of the foremost American authorities on flying. Wilbur had written him on May 13, 1900, asking his advice on a suitable location for conducting glider experiments. That correspondence triggered a lively lifelong dialog.

Chanute respected the Wrights technical advances in flying and wanted them to observe two gliders of different designs that he hoped would attain automatic

stability in flight. The Wrights humored Chanute, believing a better approach was to use human control as they were doing.

The Wrights were leery of Herring coming to Kitty Hawk because they didn’t want to reveal the results of their research to strangers, but acquiesced to Chanute’s request. It turned out that neither of the gliders brought to Kitty Hawk by Chanute successfully flew.

Herring is Bungler

After Herring left the Wright camp, he went directly to Washington where he tried to get a job with Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian, who was working on his own “aerodrome.” He didn’t get to see Langley, but left him a letter suggesting that he had knowledge of the Wrights’ progress. Chanute subsequently advised Langley that Herring was a “bungler” and he was not hired.

Herring’s Rascality

The next time Herring entered the lives of the Wrights was after the Wrights filed for their patent in 1903. Herring wrote them and claimed that he held a prior patent on a machine similar to theirs. He offered to form a joint company to market the Wright Flyer on the basis of 1/3 interest for him and 2/3 interest for them. The Wrights ignored what they termed as Herring’s “rascality.”

Wilbur wrote to Chanute, “A copy is also enclosed of a letter received a few days ago from Mr. Herring. This time he surprised us. —- But that he would have the effrontery to write us such a letter, after his other schemes of rascality had failed was really a little more than we expected. We shall make no answer at all.”

Herring Wins Army Bid

In 1908 Herring showed up again. The Army Signal Corps had advertised for bids for a “Heavier-Than-air Flying Machine.” The specification had been tailored closely to the Wright machine.

To everyone’s surprise, the low bidder turned out to be Herring with a bid of $20,000. Herring’s plan was to obtain the award of the contract and then subcontract the building of the machine to the Wrights. His plan was foiled when the Army decided to accept both Herring’s and the Wrights’ bid.

Herring, in an attempt to save face, said he would provide an airplane and fly it to Washington. After the Army had given him numerous extensions to the due date of September 28, Herring stopped the charade by formally requesting his contract be voided for reasons of non-delivery.

Major General Benjamin Foulois, a high school dropout who enlisted to serve in the Spanish-American War, worked his way up the ranks of the Army to a Major General becoming Chief, U.S. Army Air Corps. As a young Lt. He played a critical role in the history of the Wright Brothers.

The Wright Brothers had been awarded an Army Air Corps contract to build an airplane that met a number of critical requirements. The specification required an airplane capable of carrying two men at a speed of 40 mph while staying in the air for at least one hour. If successfully met, the Wrights’ would be awarded $25,000 plus $2,500 for each mph above 40. (They could also lose $2,500 for each mph below 40 mph.)

Lt. Foulois was the lowest ranking member of the five-man army aeronautical board that would monitor the Wright’s performance in accordance with the specification requirements. Foulois was fascinated with airplanes and had written a research paper while attending Ft. Leavenworth that concluded that airplanes would soon outperform balloons and dirigibles for wartime use.

While the Wrights were assembling their machine at Ft. Myer in preparation for their upcoming flights, Foulois was constantly peppering Wilbur with questions about flying. Wilbur was always courteous in answering his questions but was becoming increasingly exasperated.

One day Foulois asked Wilbur about a book he was reading on flying. Wilbur had enough of questions and answered, “There are no books worth reading on the subject of flying. You get your hands on that machine over there if you really want to learn about it.”

Foulois was delighted to help, put on work clothes and went to work.

On July 27, Orville fulfilled the specification requirement of a two-man flight for one hour, breaking the world’s record set by Wilbur in France. His passenger was Lt. Frank Lahm who had reported to the now deceased Lt. Thomas Selfridge who was killed the previous year in a flight with Orville.

The second specification requirement was for a ten-mile, two-man speed test. The board allowed Orville to select a member of the board to fly with him as an official observer. Orville chose Foulois. Orville liked him for his avid interest in aviation.

Orville chose Foulois because he had experience in map reading and, as a bonus he didn’t weigh much (126 pounds). His skill would be critically needed because the terrain in those days was rugged between Ft. Myer and Alexandria, containing three ravines and a forest. There would be no good place for an emergency landing.

Foulois laid out the course to require a 10-mile round-trip to Alexandria, Virginia and back. The turning point in Alexandria was called Shooter’s Hill where the George Washington Masonic Memorial is now located. At the time, the cornerstone had just been laid.

Foulois arranged for a sausage-shaped tethered balloon to fly above Shooters Hill to mark the turnaround point.

One has to marvel at Orville’s and Foulois’s fearlessness. Since 1902, Orville had endured five serious crashes. The previous year’s crash was nearly fatal to Orville and Army board member Lt. Selfridge was killed. But, there was no hint of any hesitancy on the part of either one.

Foulois showed up for the flight on July 30 fully prepared with two stop watches around his neck, a aneroid barometer strapped to one thigh and a box compass to the other. He stuck a map inside his belt.

They took off at 6:46 p.m. from the parade ground at Fort Myer with President William Howard Taft and a crowd of 7,000 spectators cheering them on. The Flyer climbed to 50 feet and circled the parade ground twice before heading off to Alexandria.

Orville told Foulois that if they ran into trouble he would land in a field or the thickest clump of trees he could find. Foulois said later he nodded and gulped because he knew there wasn’t any flat land available on the route.

When the Flyer flew out of sight, the crowd fell silent with apprehension. They were aware of the rugged course. Wilbur estimated what the time of travel would be, but when the Flyer didn’t appear at the appointed time, he grew concerned and beads of sweat formed on his forehead and rolled down his checks. His estimated time was too optimistic.

A spectator shouted, “he’s down!” Katharine gave him a sharp reprimand. “How do you know he’s down?” Then there were cries of “there it comes,” as the Flyer reappeared over the treetops to the south.

Orville nosed the plane down to pick up speed as it roared with a flourish over the finish line at 7:08 p.m. to the cheers of the crowd and the honking of horns. He went on to circle Arlington Cemetery, then turned off the motor and glided in for a landing. Pandemonium reigned as the two men were almost mobbed by the crowd.

On the return trip Orville flew at an altitude of 400 feet setting a new world altitude record.

President Taft congratulated Orville on the spot. Lt. Foulois said it was the only time he ever saw Wilbur smile.

The next day they learned that the Flyer’s average speed was calculated to be 42.58-mph. That meant they earned a $5,000 bonus to add to their earned 40-mph price of $25,000. On August 2, 1909 the Signal Corps accepted the Wright Flyer for military use. It was the first airplane purchased and placed in service by any government.

This model, sometimes known as Signal Corps No. 1, was Wright Model A. It was restored by the Wrights and now resides in the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. It was the only one of its type constructed by the Wrights.

The army contract also required the training of two military pilots. Lt. Frank Lahm and Lt. Foulois were selected to be the first to receive the training.

Before training could begin they needed to find a new location to fly. The commanding officer at Fort Myer requested they move because they interfered with his summer training program.

Frank Lahm found a new field they could use in Maryland near what is now the University of Maryland. The field, College Park Airport, is sill in use.

At the last minute, Foulois was given orders to attend the International Conference of Aeronautics at Nancy, France and an aeronautical exhibition in Frankfort, Germany. Foulois was being punished for being too negative on the future of the dirigible.

Lt. Humphreys was selected to take the place of Foulois.

When Foulois returned, he first flew with Wilbur on October 23. Three days later Humphreys and Lahm made their first solo flight, becoming the first military pilots in American history.

On November 5, Lahm and Humphreys crashed their airplane while flying together. They were not hurt but there were no parts locally available to make repairs. Besides, the weather was turning cold with hazardous crosswinds.

The army decided to move operations from College Park to a warmer climate at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

Lahm and Humphreys were given orders to return to their former non-flying assignments.

Foulois argued hard to be the one to take the plane to Texas. A senior officer who disapproved of Foulois and his campaign on behalf of the airplane, approved of Foulois going to Texas, saying, “Let him have it. He’ll break his neck, and that’ll be the end of this nonsense.”

Foulois and nine mechanics were ordered to take the repaired Wright machine No. 1 to Fort Sam Houston.

Foulois had time for only three flying lessons from Wilbur and that was not sufficient to be able to solo. When Foulois mentioned this to his superiors, he was told to “take plenty of spare parts and teach yourself to fly”

His orders to Texas were amended to divert their travel to Chicago to attend an electrical trade exhibition to show off their airplane.

The machine was hung from the ceiling of the exhibition hall. An electric motor was rigged to the propellers so they could spin as if in flight. The opening night a popular singer appeared on a small balcony which just happened to be directly in the airflow from the propellers spinning at 400 rpm. Foulois reported that “when she opened up her tonsils with the hit song of the day, “I’ve Got Rings on My Fingers,” the blast from the props blew most of the song down her throat and her dress up around her necklace.”

Foulois arrived in Texas in February 1910 and commenced to erect a small hanger and begin teaching himself to fly by trial and error. He received help from Orville and Wilbur who answered his questions and provided instructions through correspondence. On March 2, he made his first solo, reporting that “I made my first solo, landing, takeoff and crash.”

He only was allotted $150 for maintenance of the airplane, but the repairs from his first four months of flying exceeded his appropriation so he had to spend $300 of his own money for the repairs.

Foulois liked to say that he was the first correspondence-school pilot.

Wilbur was disturbed by the many accidents Foulois was having. He sent Frank Coffyn, a member of the Wright Exhibition Team, down to Texas to find out what the problem was.

Coffyn soon diagnosed the problem as “ground shyness.” This was the term used to describe a pilot that “landed” about sixty feet above the earth, where he often stalled his airplane and fell to the earth. It is one of the mental hazards of flying and by no means rare.

In 1914, Foulois became the first commander of a tactical air unit, the “1st Aero Squadron.” This was the army’s first air force. Their first military action was to provide support to General’s Pershing’s incursion into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa.

Foulois would later become the first Chief of the U.S. Army Air Service, The Chief of the Materiel Division at Wright Field in Dayton and Chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1931 to 1935 and rise to the rank of a major general.

During his tour at Wright Field in 1929-1930, he lived on a house built by my great-great grandfather (Henry Hebble). The house is now known as the Foulois House and is used as the base commander’s residence.

During this period at Wright Field, Orville Wright most likely visited him. There is no record of this but there is a record that Orville visited Major Henry “Hap” Arnold who lived in a house a short distance away during the same time frame. Incidentally, the house that Arnold lived in as known as the Arnold house. It is the oldest building on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and was also built by Henry Hebble.

Hebble also built a number of covered bridges in the vicinity of Wright Field. Only two still exit. One is near Antioch College (on the left), and the other is near Wilberforce College (on the right).

One other anecdote about Foulois: It involved Babe Ruth in a publicity stunt in 1925 and was covered by the press, radio and motion pictures. The idea was to have Babe Ruth catch a baseball dropped by an airplane.

Foulois said, “I had a pilot, Captain Harold McClelland, go up with three baseballs and bomb the “Babe” with them from 250 feet. The first two balls knocked him flat, but he held onto the third one and gave it to me as a souvenir.”

Foulois was a forceful and outspoken advocate for a strong and separate air force. In the process he alienated his military superiors and some members of Congress. As a result he was forced into retirement in 1935. Shortly before retirement he proudly admitted to General Douglas MacArthur, a friend and baseball teammate years ago at Fort Leavenworth, that he had been using unorthodox language against the War Department General Staff since 1908.

On Christmas day just before retirement he flew for the last time:

“I had a strange feeling as I looked down at a flattened place in the dunes from the beach. There was the skeleton of an old shack there and I suddenly knew where I was. I began to circle. Below me was Kill Devil Hill, really only a mound of sand about 100 feet above the water level. Like a pilgrim going to Mecca, I had been drawn inexorably to that small deserted spot where aviation had been thirty-two years before. This is where it all began, I said out loud to myself. This is where it all began.”

Reference: “From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts” by Benjamin D. Foulois