The Bishop's Boys (39 page)
Authors: Tom D. Crouch
In July 1900, the count had made an 18-minute, three-and-a-half-mile flight with the 420-foot-long LZ-1. Initially, even German enthusiasts had difficulty recognizing the potential of the Zeppelin. As the
Frankfurter Zeitung
reported, the experiment “proved conclusively that a dirigible balloon is of no practical value.” Zeppelin persevered. In 1909, the aging count established a sightseeing passenger air service linking major German cities.
Inspired by Zeppelin, Paul and Pierre Lebaudy, sugar refiners from Nantes, launched the first in a series of large semirigid airships in 1902. But the Zeppelin and Lebaudy programs were expensive, government-supported ventures in which the members of the Aéro-Club de France took little interest. In the wake of his Deutsch Prize victory, even Santos lost his enthusiasm for the airship. “To propel a dirigible balloon through the air,” he announced, “is like pushing a candle through a brick wall.”
23
Ferdinand Ferber sensed that Aéro-Club enthusiasm for lighter-than-air flight was waning by 1902, and saw an opportunity to draw the organization into the mainstream of heavier-than-air developments. He began with an article published in February 1903.
“Expériences d’Aviation” warned Frenchmen that leadership in aeronautics had been forfeited to the United States. Ferber called for other enthusiasts to join him in gliding experiments that would enable France to recapture the lead from Langley, Chanute, and those mysterious figures, “Messrs. Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio USA.”
24
Chanute’s speech at the Aéro-Club on the evening of April 2 fanned the spark kindled by Ferber’s article. He described his own work as well as that of Huffaker and Herring, closing with a lengthy description of the Wright experiments of 1900–02. It was a great success but not one of Chanute’s finer moments.
25
An aging widower returned in triumph to the city of his youth, Chanute exaggerated his own role and misrepresented his relationship with the Wrights. He spoke of them as his “devoted collaborators,” as “young, intelligent and daring, pupils” who worked under his guidance. A newsman noted that the brothers had written to Chicago for technical information, on the basis of which they built “machines similar to those of Mr. Chanute” and were actively carrying “his” work forward to completion.
26
Chanute’s description of the Wright technology was so sketchy as to be useless to any experimenter. His reply to a question about the Wrights’ lateral-control system was vague: “To regulate lateral equilibrium, he [Wilbur] operates two cords which act on the right and left side of the wing by warping [
gauchisement
], and simultaneously by moving the rear vertical rudder.”
27
Was Chanute muddying the waters to protect the Wright “secrets,” or was he simply unable to provide a more accurate description? Either way, the talk did little to illuminate the basic principles of the 1902 glider. He had misled the French about a great many things. What they did understand was that
les frères Wright
were well on their way to solving the problems of mechanical flight. The comte de La Vaulx, a confirmed nationalist, described the reaction:
For most of the listeners, except Ferber and his friends, it was a disagreeable revelation; when we spoke in France rather vaguely about the flights of the Wright brothers, we did not doubt their remarkable progress; but Chanute was now perfectly explicit about them and showed us their real importance. The French aviators felt at last that… they had been resting on the laurels of their predecessors too long, and that it was time to get seriously to work if they did not wish to be left behind.
28
Ernest Archdeacon was even more disturbed.
Will the homeland of the Montgolfier suffer the shame of allowing this ultimate discovery of aerial science—which is certainly imminent, and which will constitute the greatest scientific revolution since the beginning of the world—to be realized abroad? Gentlemen scholars, to your compasses! You, the Maecenases; and you, too, of the Government, put your hands deep into your pockets—else we are beaten!
29
A wealthy lawyer and a balloonist with a reputation for fearlessness, Archdeacon found a new mission in life. “Anxious to retain for his nation the glory of giving birth to the first man-carrying aeroplane,” the comte de La Vaulx recalled, “Archdeacon set out to shake our aviators out of their torpor, and put a stop to French indifference concerning flying machines.”
30
Ferber did not attend Chanute’s lecture, but he was aware of the sudden stir in Paris. He wrote to Archdeacon, suggesting that a glider competition sponsored by the Aéro-Club would revive French aeronautics. “Our experience has taught us that racing leads to improved machines; and the airplane must not be allowed to reach successful achievement in America.”
31
The notion appealed to Archdeacon, who offered to contribute 3,000 francs to a prize fund. In addition, he raised the issue of a glider competition at the next meeting of the club’s Technical Committee on Aerial Locomotion on May 6, 1903. The members created a special Subcommittee on Aviation Experiments, with dirigible builder Charles Renard as president and Archdeacon as secretary. Over the next five years this subcommittee would completely overwhelm both the parent committee and the Aéro-Club itself.
Ferber’s competition was never held, but he was no longer alone. Within a matter of months the club became the headquarters for a band of experimenters so determined to fly that they took to calling themselves “
les aviateurs militantes
.” They had set off in pursuit of the Wrights too late to catch them, but not too late to write their names large in the history of flight.
June
~
December 1903
W
ilbur addressed the Western Society of Engineers for a second time on the evening of June 18, 1903. There was a new confidence in his voice. The major problems were behind him now. Back in Dayton, Charlie and Orv had the engine up and running. Instead of the 8 horsepower they had expected, it developed 16 horsepower when first started and dropped off to 12 after a few seconds running time. They had overcome the propeller problem as well. Orville summed it up in a letter to George Spratt: “Isn’t it wonderful that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so that we could discover them.”
1
Wilbur had every reason to feel confident, and every reason not to talk about it. The rejection of their patent application was a serious blow. They had no legal protection for their ideas—ideas that suddenly seemed very interesting to the French. Chanute, just back from France, had been invited to contribute an article to the
Revue des Sciences
, and was pressing for the release of additional information. “Should the warping of the wings be mentioned,” he asked on June 30. “Somebody may be hurt if it is not.”
2
Wilbur was firm. “It is not our wish that any description of this feature of our machine be given at present.” When Chanute sent them a copy of his article for approval, they found it riddled with errors. The author gave the camber of the 1902 machine as
1
/
20
rather than
1
/
25
, and stated that the rudder was controlled by “twines leading to the hands of the aviator.” “Really,” Wilbur noted, “this is news to me!”
3
Chanute was taken aback. How was he to describe the function of the rudder when they had asked him not to discuss the wing-warping system? Wilbur ignored the comment, noting that he and Orv had called only the most substantial errors to Chanute’s attention. There were others. The article claimed that they had tested only forty-one surfaces in the wind tunnel and that all of them had been “straight, from tip to tip.” Chanute had also claimed that the Wright machine was guyed with “piano wire.” They had allowed those minor errors to pass, but the twines running to the hands were too much.
4
“But,” Chanute retorted, “it does not answer the question: How is the vertical tail operated?”
5
The Wrights realized that Chanute was not looking for a means of describing the action of the rudder without revealing any secrets. He honestly did not know how it worked.
“The vertical tail is operated by wires leading to the wires that connect with the wing tips,” Wilbur informed him. “Thus the movement of the wing tips operates the rudder.” He added quickly that this was “not for publication, but merely to correct the misapprehension in your mind.” There was to be no further release of technical information.
As the laws of France & Germany provide that patents will be held invalid if the matter claimed has been publicly printed we prefer to exercise reasonable caution about the details of our machine until the question of patents is settled. I only see three methods of dealing with this matter: (1) Tell the truth. (2) Tell nothing specific. (3) Tell something that is not true. I really cannot advise either the first or the third course.
6
“I was puzzled by the way you put things in your former letters,” Chanute responded on July 27. “You were sarcastic, and I did not catch the idea that you feared that the description might forestall a patent.” Now that he understood, he would take “pleasure in suppressing the passage altogether.” At the same time, he believed that a full account of the wing-warping and rudder combination “would have proved harmless as the construction is ancient and well known.”
7
The Wrights let that pass. Many years later, in 1910, they expressed surprise when Chanute admitted to newsmen that he had never regarded the Wright wing-warping system as anything new. In fact, Chanute had sent them a great many signals over the years, including both the copy of the Mouillard patent and the remark suggesting that wing warping was well known. The Wrights chose to ignore those signals. Wilbur, especially, enjoyed Chanute’s friendship, and was not willing to endanger it by forcing an argument.
The brothers were determined to concentrate on getting into the air with their powered machine. They refused to deal with potential distractions, including a request forwarded by Chanute from the editor of
L’Aérophile
for portraits and information to be used in putting together a biographical sketch. “Really,” Wilbur responded, “we would rather not.”
8
Chanute also raised the issue of visitors to the 1903 camp. Pat Alexander was planning another trip to the United States. Would the Wrights mind if he spent some time at Kitty Hawk? Will explained that they had “made a firm resolve” that Spratt and Chanute would be the only persons allowed in camp this year. “We have so much to do, and so little time to do it.” An exception might be made in Alexander’s case—“We will consider the matter further when we see how things progress in camp.”
9
The machine was almost complete. It was never fully assembled in Dayton, but they had weighed the individual parts and estimated the weight of the finished craft at 675 pounds. It was more than they had planned, but the engine was producing more than the calculated 8 horsepower as well. There should be no difficulty.
The new machine was larger and sturdier than its predecessors. The ribs were built up of two pieces of wood, tacked and glued in place over supporting blocks. The end bows were pieces of bent wood manufactured by a local firm, the S. N. Brown Co., for use in folding carriages. They covered the wings, top and bottom, with a tightly woven muslin known as “Pride of the West.” It was used straight off the bolt, with no additional doping to make it more airtight.
Each wing was built in three sections. The two outer bays were warped, as in the earlier gliders, but the central bay supporting the pilot, engine, and drive mechanism was rigidly trussed. There was a hip cradle for combined wing-warping and rudder operation and a hand control for the elevator. There was no throttle, but the pilot did have an engine cut-off switch.
The elevator was a double-surfaced affair designed to carry a significant proportion of the flight load, especially during the first moments in the air, when it would be operating at a much higher angle of attack than the wings. The brothers also devised a new launch system. The 1903 machine was much too large and heavy to manhandle to the top of a dune. At any rate, a gravity-assisted takeoff would hinder proof of the machine’s ability for sustained flight.
The Wrights constructed a sixty-foot takeoff rail down which the airplane would ride on two bicycle-wheel hubs. One hub would be permanently attached to the forward end of the craft, the other would be carried on a small truck that supported the rear of the machine, and dropped off once it was airborne. The entire launch system—“the junction railroad,” as they took to calling it—had cost very little, a marked contrast to the $50,000 that Samuel Langley had invested in the catapult system for the Great Aerodrome, also approaching completion.
10
The 1903 season would be unlike any other. Always before the emphasis had been on testing new approaches, verifying the results of research conducted during the off-season, gaining experience in the air, and accustoming themselves to a new machine by making as many glides as possible. This year they had only one goal: to get the powered machine off the ground in sustained and controlled flight. The engine, transmission system, and airframe would require a great deal of fine tuning, so they planned to continue practicing with the 1902 glider while preparing the powered machine for its first trial.
They left Dayton at 8:55 on the morning of Wednesday, September 23, determined not to return home until they had achieved at least one powered flight. They made the trip in record time, arriving in Kitty Hawk at noon on September 26. Early the following week they were back in the air with the 1902 glider. They completed seventy-five glides on the first day, the best of which, 30 2/5 seconds in length, broke all of their old records. It was an auspicious beginning.