The Bishop's Boys (31 page)
Authors: Tom D. Crouch
But there were problems. Chanute believed above all in the importance of sharing information. He was quite certain that when the airplane did come, it would be the result of a cooperative effort. While he had encouraged the young engineers with whom he was directly associated to protect their ideas with patents, he also insisted that they make the results of their joint experiments available to the widest possible audience. There was no telling what bit of data might prove crucial to the work of another experimenter.
Chanute hoped that the Wrights would allow him to present the details of their work to the world in the same way. He broached the subject with great care. “I have lately been asked to prepare an article for
Cassier’s Magazine,”
he wrote on November 23, 1900, “and I should like your permission to allude to your experiments in such brief and guarded way as you may indicate.”
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Wilbur hedged, noting that “it is not our intention to make a close secret of our machine, but at the same time, inasmuch as we have not yet had opportunity to test the full possibilities of our methods, we wish to be the first to give them such a test.” The Wrights offered to give Chanute any information he wanted for his own use, but asked that there be “no publication in detail of the methods of operation or construction of our machine.”
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Disappointed but eager to assure them that he could be trusted, Chanute wrote back on November 29, enclosing two pages from the manuscript of his article “covering
all
that I have said about my own experiments, and what I have just added about yours.” It described the Wrights’ work in a single paragraph focusing on the importance of the prone pilot position in reducing air resistance to one half of that encountered by previous experimenters. Published in the June 1901 issue of
Cassier’s
under the title “Aerial Navigation,” the article was the first public notice of the Wright aeronautical experiments.
Wilbur published two technical articles of his own that summer. The first, “Angle of Incidence,” appeared in the July 1901 issue of
The Aeronautical Journal
, the official organ of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. The second article, “Die Wagerechte Lage Während des Gleitfluges” (“The Horizontal Position During Gliding
Flight”), was published that same month in the
Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen
.
Both articles were short and straightforward. In preparing “Angle of Incidence,” Wilbur did not even mention that he had actually conducted flying-machine experiments. The German article was a plain statement of the fact that the author had made landings in the prone position at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour without injury or danger. Wilbur illustrated the piece with a single photograph of the 1900 glider being flown as a kite. That photograph, and a scattering of others over the next two years, would spark a renaissance in European aeronautics. The words of Wilbur and Orville Wright could be ignored or misread, but the message of their photographs was unmistakable. The Wrights were flying.
Wilbur’s desire to return to Kitty Hawk with a new machine embodying the lessons of 1900 was apparent in his letters to Chanute. This year they planned to stay longer—for six to eight weeks in September and October—establishing a permanent camp at the Kill Devil Hills, complete with a hangar to house the new glider.
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The design of the 1901 machine was complete by mid-May. This time, the brothers refused to cut any corners. In 1900, the calculations had called for a glider with a surface area of over 225 square feet in order to operate in a 15-mile an hour wind. Aware that Kitty Hawk would offer winds averaging only 13–14 mph, the Wrights had nevertheless settled for just 165 square feet of wing. It was a mistake they would not make again. This year they would not only stick to the calculations, they would build in a margin of safety.
With a twenty-two-foot span and a chord of seven feet, the 1901 Wright machine was the largest glider ever flown. The total surface area of 315 square feet, including the elevator, was two and a half times that of the 1900 craft. The area, weight, and other features of the glider matched the calculated requirements for an aircraft flying at a 5-degree angle of attack.
The Wrights removed one more uncertainty, abandoning the shallow wing camber of 1 in 23 employed in 1900. The Lilienthal lift and drag tables were based on an arch of 1 in 12. That was what the Wrights would use.
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With the design complete, Wilbur and Orville felt it impossible to postpone getting back into the air. On June 19 they informed Chanute that “changes in our business arrangements” would enable them to leave for Kitty Hawk much earlier than originally planned.
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That change had come in the person of Charles Taylor.
Charlie was an old friend. Born on May 24, 1868, near Cerro Gordo, Illinois, he had quit school after the seventh grade and worked at a variety of mechanical trades before meeting Henrietta Webbert at the Jolly Young Men and Girls Club in Kearney, Nebraska, in 1892. Four years later, married and finding it difficult to establish themselves in Nebraska, the couple moved to Dayton, where Henrietta’s brother said there were jobs to be had. Charlie worked at Stoddard Manufacturing for a time, then established his own machine shop.
The Wrights met Charlie through his brother-in-law, who owned the building where the Wright Cycle Company was located. They liked him at once, and directed business his way. Charlie helped to plan the production of the oil-retaining wheel hub of which the Wrights were so proud, and machined the original coaster brakes for the Van Cleve bicycles.
Eventually Taylor tired of struggling as an independent and took a job with the Dayton Electric Company. Strolling home after work on a hot Saturday night in June 1901, he stopped off to say hello to the Wrights, who were open late that evening. “One of the brothers, I forget which, asked me how I would like to go to work for them,” he remembered many years later.
There were just two of them in the shop and they said they needed another hand. They offered me $18 a week. That was pretty good money; it figured to 30 cents an hour. I was making 25 cents at the Dayton Electric Company, which was about the same as all skilled machinists were getting. The Wright shop was only six blocks from where I lived—at Calm and Grant streets—and I could bicycle to lunch. Besides, I liked the Wrights. So I said all right and I reported in on June 15. That was in 1901.
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Katharine always had trouble with Charlie. She found him altogether too sure of himself for a “hired man.” Then there were the cigars—Charlie smoked them one after another, consuming up to twenty a day. But Wilbur and Orville knew that Charlie could be counted on to get the job done. They must have been convinced that he was honest as well, for they were about to trust him with their livelihood.
Just a year before, Wilbur had explained to Chanute that they could not afford to allow a hobby to interfere with their business. Now they were hiring Taylor to watch the shop at the height of the season because they could not wait an extra month to resume their experiments. It was out of character—and a clear indication of shifting priorities.
Four days after Charlie started work, Wilbur told Chanute they would leave for Kitty Hawk by July 10. Chanute immediately wired Dayton to ask if he could pay a personal visit on the afternoon of June 26. There was a dinner that evening, but it seems likely that the three men, lost in conversation, scarcely noticed what they were eating. The discussions continued into the next day, right up until Chanute caught the afternoon train for Tennessee, where he planned to visit Edward Chalmers Huffaker, an assistant who was at work on a new glider designed by Chanute.
One of the most experienced and best educated aeronautical experimenters in the United States, Huffaker was a graduate of Emory and Henry College, and held an M.S. in physics from the University of Virginia. His interest in flight was inspired by Langley’s work, and that of the American expatriate Hiram Maxim. He had written to Chanute in 1892, describing his own experiments with a series of glider models. Chanute invited the young engineer to offer a paper at the great aeronautical meeting in Chicago.
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The Wrights listened politely as Chanute described his contract with Huffaker, unaware that a plan linking them to the Tennessee engineer was already forming in the mind of their guest. While Chanute did not broach the subject, he was a firm believer in the team approach to aeronautics, and regarded his own experience at the Indiana Dunes as a model. By gathering a small group of talented young enthusiasts at an isolated site for a period of intense testing, he had been able both to compare the performance of various glider types and to encourage a cross-fertilization of ideas.
Wilbur and Orville’s new round of glider tests offered a golden opportunity to do it all again. Huffaker should be sent to join the brothers at Kitty Hawk with the glider that he was completing. Chanute also had George Spratt, a young physician from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, in mind as a possible team member.
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Spratt had never constructed a machine or seen a glider fly, but his thoughts on the subject intrigued Chanute.
George Alexander Spratt had first written to Chanute in April 1899. He had been fascinated by flying creatures since boyhood—“Flying has been the dream of my life,” he confided. “I never scared a bird up or saw it cross a valley, but what I longed to go with it and envied it.” The young man devised an apparatus to measure the lift of curved surfaces, and conducted test flights with a large model glider that proved rather disappointing.
He refused Chanute’s offer to pay for the materials to be used in
building a full-scale version of his glider, remarking that he would “bungle” the job and waste the money. What better experience than two weeks with the confident Wright brothers?
Chanute recognized that the situation was not precisely what it had been in 1896. The Wright brothers were not his employees, and had no desire to be members of any team. Still, Chanute intended to take full advantage of the fact that they were polite and would be unwilling to offend him.
Two days after leaving Dayton, he wrote to Wilbur, expressing his disappointment in the Huffaker glider. “The mechanical details and connections of the gliding machine … are so weak, that I fear they will not stand long enough to test the efficiency of the ideas in its design….”
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Indeed, as Chanute described it, the machine sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. Huffaker had constructed the wing struts of cardboard tubing, designed the wings to fold for easy storage, and attached the fabric so as to automatically vary the curvature of the wing with changes in pressure. The Wrights found it difficult not to laugh when they first saw the thing.
Having disarmed the Wrights, Chanute offered a proposal. “If you were not about to experiment, I should abandon the machine without testing, but perhaps it will stand long enough to try it as a kite, and to make a few glides from a height of 15 or 20 feet.” If the Wrights thought they could “extract instruction from its failure,” he would ask Huffaker to join them at Kitty Hawk at his expense. They could call on Huffaker for assistance with their tests in exchange for their help with his own trials. “The latter,” Chanute hastened to add, “I expect to be brief.” In addition, Chanute offered to send George Spratt along, “if you think you want more assistance.”
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Was the letter an offer of help or a call for assistance? The Wrights had no need of help, and would find the presence of two strangers in their camp a trial and an inconvenience. Still, if Chanute was honestly asking for their assistance in testing his craft and training his people, they could not easily refuse.
“As to Mr. Huffaker’s trip to Kitty Hawk,” Wilbur replied on July 1, “I do not feel competent to advise you, as you alone can judge whether the probable advantage would justify the expense involved.” They could not accept Chanute’s offer to send Spratt as their helper. “If, however, you wish to get a line on his capacity and aptitude and give him a little experience with a view to utilizing him in your own work later, we will be very glad to have him with us.”
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Sensing their reluctance, Chanute wrote back on July 3, assuring Wilbur that Spratt was “discreet concerning other people’s ideas,” and that Huffaker was “quite reliable.” “I mention this,” he concluded, “as you told me that you have no patents.”
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Wilbur responded briskly:
We have felt no uneasiness on this point, as we do not think the class of people who are interested in aeronautics would naturally be of a character to act unfairly. The labors of others have been of great benefit to us in obtaining an understanding of the subject and have been suggestive and stimulating. We would be pleased if our labors should be of similar benefit to others. We of course would not wish our ideas and methods appropriated bodily, but if our work suggests ideas to others which they can work out on a different line and reach better results than we do, we will try hard not to feel jealous or that we have been robbed in any way.
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The Wrights left for Kitty Hawk on Sunday, July 7. A storm much worse than any they had experienced the previous fall held them in Elizabeth City for several extra days. “Anemometer cups gave way at 93 miles per hour,” Wilbur reported to Chanute, “… the highest speed [ever] recorded.”
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Just before crossing the Sound they wired traveling instructions to Huffaker and Spratt, and to Chanute, who was also planning to join them.
They reached Kitty Hawk dock on Thursday evening and spent the night at the Tates. The following morning they loaded all their camping equipment and lumber onto a beach cart and drove to the campsite at the Kill Devil Hills, where Will had flown the fall before. They were off to a bad start:
After fooling around all day inside the tent, excepting on a few occasions when we rushed out to drive a few more tent pegs, our thirst became unbearable, and we decided upon driving the Webbert pump, no well where we could get water being within a mile’s distance. Well (pun), we got no well; the point came loose down in the sand and, we lost it! Oh misery! Most dead for water and none within a mile! excepting what was coming from the skies. However, we decided to catch a little of this, and placed the dish pan where the water dripped down from the tent roof; and though it tasted somewhat of the soap we had rubbed on the canvas to keep it from mildewing, it pretty well filled a long-felt want.
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