A year and a half later the brothers received a basic patent. It was so general that besides the warping of the wings, it covered every other system of lateral flight control that has ever succeeded. Nevertheless, the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications still refused a free look at their flying machine.
That summer, the Wrights planned to startle the government into action by suddenly appearing in their machine, as a floatplane, over the navies of the world assembled in Hampton Roads for the Jamestown Exposition. But they dropped the plan before the floats were ready because a British-French syndicate, which had quietly investigated their activities, invited them abroad to demonstrate their craft.
Their skill as fliers, acquired in seven years’ practice, made the Wrights an immediate success. By the end of summer, European companies were being licensed to build Wright machines, and American papers were spreading their fame. President Roosevelt prodded William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, and Taft pushed the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications, which at long last got in touch with the Wrights. In December, the Board invited them to build and demonstrate, at no cost to the government, a machine that could take off in a short space, carry two persons for an hour at a speed of at least 40 miles per hour, hold enough fuel for a flight of 125 miles, and be easy to take apart and fold into an Army wagon.
In September 1908, by Army invitation, the Navy sent Lieutenant George Sweet and Naval Constructor William McEntee to be members of the Aero Board appointed to observe Orville Wright’s demonstration at Fort Myer. His plane was larger; the engine produced 25 horsepower. The pilot sat on the leading edge of the lower wing, instead of lying on his stomach. A foot throttle freed his right hand to manage the lever that now controlled wing tips and rudder. The passenger seat beside him on the centerline was partly in front of the radiator and engine. The outriggers could fold to let the machine ride atop a wagon. For the short takeoff, the plane straddled a monorail with one of its landing skids resting lightly on the ground. A line led from the machine, over a head-sheave on the track, then back to a weight hanging from a timber tripod to the rear of the monorail.
11. Captain Thomas S. Baldwin flying his balloon over Fort Myer, Virginia, 12 August 1908. Glenn Curtiss is running the four-cylinder, 24-horsepower motor. This first water-cooled Curtiss engine had enough power to drive the gas bag at twenty miles per hour. (National Archives)
On 3 September, at the Fort Myer, Virginia, parade ground, Sweet, McEntee, and a few hundred skeptics gathered around the Wright flying machine. Orville took his seat on the wing and raced the engine. Then he yanked a release rope, the weight fell, and the plane scooted along the rail and skimmed up into the air. Orville flew one and a half times around the parade ground in less than two minutes, then landed. He made it look easy and the crowd went wild.
Every day for the next two weeks, thousands of persons jammed the field to see a flight. Twice they saw Orville carry a passenger. When he stayed up for an hour and a quarter, it was a world’s record. Sweet was enthusiastic. He talked to Orville about flying from a ship. The inventor thought it would be easy. He offered to help draw up practicable specifications for a suitable machine.
Then, on 17 September, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, United States Army, rode as Orville’s passenger. They had planned a passenger-carrying test flight to Alexandria and back. Moments after they left the ground, a propeller tip cut a tail brace wire. The rudder flopped over, trailing at a crazy angle. Orville tried to avoid trees and rough ground ahead by turning back toward the field. On the turn, the machine stalled and dove into the ground. Selfridge, crushed by the engine and radiator, was the first man killed in an aeroplane.
George Sweet’s original report of the trials proposed that the Navy take up Orville Wright’s offer and get planes for shipboard tests. This suggestion stopped with his superior, Rear Admiral Cowles, Chief of the Bureau of Equipment. Two and a half months later, Cowles signed an emasculated revision which stated in part: “From recent tests at Fort Myer and reports of this machine from France . . . it has been demonstrated beyond a doubt that aeroitation [sic] is finally an accomplished fact . . . and man can fly when he wants to within the limits of the machine.” The remainder of seven pages listed possible future aeroplane developments and obvious naval applications. There was no account of the Fort Myer flights, no mention of Orville Wright’s offer of assistance, and no recommendation for Navy action. Consequently, nothing came of it.
However, George Sweet had a recompense of sorts. On 9 November 1909, Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, one of the Army’s first three pilots, who had been one of Sweet’s fellow members on the observing team, carried him as a passenger in the Army’s first Wright plane. Thus Sweet became the first naval officer to fly in a heavier-than-air machine.
Glenn Curtiss was a young man with an ingenious and inquiring mind who also got his start in a bicycle shop. His desire to get something to push his bicycle up the hills of Hammondsport, New York, led him to buy a mail-order engine, which he shortly improved upon. When other people saw his motorized bicycle, they wanted one like it, and soon Curtiss found his bicycle shop had turned into a motorcycle shop. He, like the Wrights, worked by trial and error, and his mechanical ability proved to be a great asset in designing his engines.
12. Glenn Curtiss in his June Bug, 4 July 1908. (Clara Studer)
One of his 2-cycle gasoline motorcycle engines was purchased by Captain Thomas S. (“Cap”) Baldwin, a builder of primitive blimps of the day. Baldwin hung the engine under a gas bag, called it an “airship,” and demonstrated it successfully at the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Would-be blimp builders, of whom there were quite a few, were soon ordering Curtiss engines. Later, Curtiss flew one of Baldwin’s blimps at Hammondsport; the event marked the beginning of his lifelong interest in aviation.
In January 1907, Curtiss assembled a saddle, a pair of handlebars, a frame, two wheels, and an 8-cylinder, 40-horsepower, dirigible engine and took it all to Florida. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the group that watched Curtiss and his motorcycle roar down Ormond Beach at 137 miles per hour. This record was destined to stand as man’s fastest speed on wheels for some 30 years. The Curtiss engine interested Bell. He had been a friend of Langley’s and had lately been experimenting with man-carrying kites. Could an engine be used on his kites? He invited Curtiss to visit him and discuss the possibility.
The following summer, at Bell’s summer home in Nova Scotia, the Aerial Experiment Association was organized. Besides Bell and Curtiss, its members were Lieutenant Selfridge (soon to die in a plane crash), and two young Canadian engineers, John A. D. McCurdy and F. W. Baldwin. It was agreed that each in turn would take the lead in designing a plane, and Mrs. Bell put up the money to build the machines in Curtiss’ shop at Hammondsport, New York.
Selfridge designed the first plane, and late in 1907, F. W. Baldwin flew it some 300 feet over frozen Lake Keuka before he crashed. In May 1908, Curtiss flew Baldwin’s design 1,000 feet. Then on the Fourth of July he flew a mile in a plane of his own design—the June Bug. As the Wrights did not make a first public flight at Fort Myer until September, this flight won the Scientific American prize offered for the first American straightaway flight of more than a kilometer. Despite the fact that the Wrights were still the only Americans who knew how to control an aircraft so as to fly in circles, Curtiss promptly advertised aeroplanes for sale with flying instruction for each purchaser.
Meanwhile, “Cap” Baldwin, the blimp builder, made the low bid for the Army’s first dirigible order. In order to qualify, the machine had to fly under power for two hours and be able to maneuver in any direction. In the spring of 1908, Curtiss built his first water-cooled engine for this machine, and helped Baldwin demonstrate his blimp at Fort Myer.