Unlocking the Sky (17 page)
Authors: Seth Shulman
“In the arguments of their lawyers,” Curtiss says, the Wrights have convinced Judge Hazel “that my machines depend on the vertical rudder to maintain equilibrium.” In the Wrights’ airplanes, he says, “the warping surface of the planes gives the machines a turning tendency which the rudder has to overcome.” On the contrary, he says, “the rudders on the Curtiss machines have no such function.” And, he says, he will prove his point with a demonstration.
Following the announcement, Curtiss, along with two other pilots flying Curtiss airplanes at the meet, set out to disprove the Wrights’ claim. Immobilizing their airplanes’ rudders, they each
make straightaway flights before thousands of spectators. On each flight, the pilots move the ailerons vigorously back and forth, causing the airplanes to rock laterally like a boat buffeted broadside by strong waves. And on each flight, as corroborated by a host of expert observers, the planes display no turning tendency whatsoever from the use of the ailerons alone.
Much to Curtiss’s chagrin, the spectacle does nothing to sway Judge Hazel. It does, however, become yet more fodder in the increasingly acrimonious case. According to the Wrights, Curtiss’s claim is technically wrong and runs counter to their superior understanding of “the unchangeable laws of nature.” Ailerons, they say, like wing warping, cause a turning effect that needs to be corrected by the airplane’s rudder. In an affidavit, they charge that Curtiss’s demonstration in Los Angeles only shows “his incompetence to give expert testimony as to what actually occurs on his machine, and even seems to raise a direct question of veracity.”
Curtiss counters that his claim is based upon a fact witnessed by scores of knowledgeable observers. And, he adds tartly, “the actual facts are, I understand, the crux of the matter, and not the theories which may be advanced.”
The truth, doubtless fully understood by neither party, is that the matter of whether ailerons cause a turning effect is an exceedingly complex aeronautical question that depends on many factors, including the aircraft’s speed and prevailing wind conditions. But Curtiss is technically accurate on the main point: that ailerons can function completely independently of the rudder as the system for an airplane’s lateral control, unlike the patented design of the early
Wright Flyer.
In any event, the argument is far beyond the capacity of Judge Hazel to adjudicate. Even more important, it is far afield from the
real heart of the issues at stake, namely, what kind of exclusive claim should an inventor deserve for his or her seminal idea and how broadly should that claim be construed? Did Selden’s half-baked, unrealized brainstorm entitle him to decades’ worth of royalties from all car manufacturers? And, if not, what should the Wrights be entitled to for their early-but-incomplete insights about the lateral control of an airplane?
Even before the lawsuit had officially gotten under way, Curtiss wrote the Wrights expressing his hope that the dispute between them could be settled discreetly and amicably. “I suggest,” he wrote, “that the matter be taken up privately between us to save if possible annoyance and publicity of lawsuits and trial.”
But the Wright brothers are bitter and obstinate. An invention they alone nurtured secretly for years is now advancing at a breakneck pace and, to them, the situation is intolerable. All they can think to do is to try to stop the interlopers.
It is hard to understand the Wrights’ motivation in pursuing such a litigious path. Perhaps the root cause of their obstructionist stance is nothing more than an issue of control. As Wilbur laments in a letter shortly before his death, “It is always easier to deal with things than with men.” But, whether the Wrights like it or not, the flying machine has burst out of the workshop and into the sky. From now on, it is destined to be adapted and perfected by an impetuous and driven array of inventors around the world.
Grover Loening, close associate of the Wrights, claims in his memoirs that their battle against Curtiss boiled down to nothing more for them than a consuming fight “for revenge and prestige.”
In any event, the Wrights were motivated by more than money.
After all, by 1910, the Wrights have become wealthy from the airplane. They have successfully sold their aircraft to the Army and to professional pilots, and they have received payments from licensed manufacturers around the world. By November 1910, the Wrights’ company is incorporated with $1 million in capital from Wall Street investors. The new company even buys the all-important wing-warping patent from the Wrights for an additional $100,000. Yet, even with this windfall, Wilbur, the new company’s president, continues battling in the courts.
Curtiss is the Wrights’ prime target in their desperate fight to own the skies, but he is by no means the only one. When the colorful French pilot Louis Paulhan comes to the United States to fly in the 1910 Los Angeles air meet, for instance, the Wrights’ attorneys meet him as soon as he steps off the boat in New York. The lawyers put him on official notice that the Wrights are seeking to legally enjoin him from flying in the United States. Not surprisingly, the Wrights’ dramatic lawsuit spawns an outpouring of editorial sympathy for Paulhan. Newspapers in the United States and abroad express outrage that the country should greet a guest to an international air meet in such a manner.
Paulhan does fly in the Los Angeles meet on January 10, 1910, but the Wrights’ injunction against him puts a stop to his plans to tour the country making demonstration flights before paying audiences. In an arrangement with a promoter, Paulhan’s flights had been publicized across the country from San Francisco to St. Louis. Paulhan had even been guaranteed an unprecedented fee of $24,000 per month for his performances. In classic French style, he had brought with him no fewer than four airplanes (two Farman biplanes and two Bleriot monoplanes) and an entourage including his wife, two assistant pilots, and five mechanics.
Sometime after the Los Angeles meet, when he receives word that the Wrights have won the injunction against him in U.S. district court, Paulhan clenches his fists and curses the brothers roundly in his native French. Only slightly more demurely, to reporters, he calls the Wrights “birds of prey.”
Psychologically, at least, Curtiss benefits from the growing anti-Wright sentiment. Members of both the U.S. Congress and the Justice Department begin to discuss the prospect of putting an end to the “air trust.” Fearing the effect on the new industry, the Aero Club of America—still the leading group of aviation aficionados of the day—floats the idea that they might purchase the U.S. rights to the Wright patent and dedicate it to the public domain. But the Wrights’ Wall Street backing is predicated largely on the promise of a monopoly on aviation, and the Wrights show little enthusiasm for the plan.
Around this time, a newspaper cartoon appears in a number of newspapers. In it, the Wright brothers stand side by side on the ground sneering and shaking their fists at an airplane above them. The caption reads: “Keep out of my air!” This kind of widespread outrage at the Wrights can’t help but offer Curtiss some consolation as he struggles as a prime casualty of their wrath. But it does little to overcome the dire nature of his immediate circumstances.
For Curtiss’s company, things could hardly be worse. First of all, dispensing with Herring proves a messy business. The company board is forced to pass a resolution requiring Herring to hand over any patents or patent applications he has. Failing to comply (because he has none)—and with the board threatening to oust him from the company—Herring actually slips out of the meeting and
quietly flees Hammondsport with his attorney. Local headlines trumpet Herring’s “sensational getaway.” And even then Curtiss has not heard the last of him. Astonishingly, Herring has the gall to sue Curtiss. He claims that he was wrongly dismissed and, most laughable, that he, Herring, is the rightful inventor of much of the company’s technology. He seeks to recover purported losses incurred while associated with the operations in Hammondsport. Herring will not prevail, but the largely frivolous suit will drag on for years to come.
During this period, as Curtiss associate Lyman Seely puts it later, “Curtiss was hounded by day and by night with lawsuits and injunctions. Anyone with a heart of less than international championship caliber must have broken under the strain. Far from that; Curtiss continued his aviation work along half a dozen lines apparently unruffled.”
Early in 1910, the debacle with Herring is a major distraction for Curtiss. But it is the Wrights’ injunction that seals his company’s fate. When Curtiss is forced to borrow funds on his personal credit to meet his company’s payroll, he has to face the prospect of bankruptcy. He knows he can’t hope to sustain an airplane company that can neither manufacture nor exhibit airplanes. The one saving grace for Curtiss is that the firm does not own the physical factory and its few machines. Rather, these are held in his own name, and it is the firm that is bankrupted. With these few assets, Curtiss is left to start over—if he can find a way to persist in the face of the Wrights’ near monopoly on aviation in the United States.
Explaining his injunction, Judge Hazel has ruled that the claims of the Wrights’ patent “should be broadly construed.” Furthermore, he writes, the dissimilarities in the control systems between the Curtiss and Wright planes are all but irrelevant because they
achieve “the same functional result.” As he puts it: “The patent in issue does not belong to the class of patents which requires narrowing to the details of construction.”
Judge Hazel also seems swayed by the Wrights’ piracy charge: that the AEA stole ideas from the Wrights and imitated their machine. He refers pointedly, for instance, to Tom Selfridge’s request for advice on glider construction even though the request had virtually nothing to do with the Wrights’ patent or maintaining lateral stability in flight.
From the first, Curtiss has vowed to appeal the injunction. His determination rests both on his desperate desire to keep his business afloat as well as on a matter of principle—not unlike Ford’s stance in the Selden case. Nor does the connection to the Selden case go unnoticed at the time. “The Wrights,” Harry Genung notes, are acting like “the Seldens of aviation,” demanding that “the world should pay them bounty.” Meanwhile, Genung explains, despite the fact that Curtiss’s airplanes are technologically far advanced of the Wrights’ designs, the brothers are “so stubborn in their demands for control, etc., as to make the thing ridiculous from our point of view.”
As Curtiss tells the press that winter: “The facts are, the honors bestowed upon the Wrights and the credit which is due them is not because of their patent, but because of their achievement. I hope their patent will be adjudicated and that the machines which operate as their machine does [i.e. wing warpers] will be adjudged infringements, but all authorities agree that our machines operate on a different principle and I do not believe a disinterested patent attorney could be found who would allow that our machine infringes their patent.”
Sometime later, Curtiss will reflect further on his actions. “Had
we not taken this stand, he writes to a colleague at the end of 1912, “the Wright Company would have been in position to enjoin all manufacturers and the whole industry would have been monopolized.”
Early in 1910, seeing few other options and desperate for a resolution, Curtiss tries again to negotiate with the Wrights. According to one account, shortly after the injunction, Curtiss boards a train to Dayton to meet the Wright brothers and their sister Katharine at their home. In person, Curtiss hopes, they can reach some kind of accommodation. But the Wrights, formal and solemn, are in no mood to negotiate. They flatly demand a 20 percent royalty on the retail price of every plane Curtiss sells and on every dollar he earns through exhibitions. Worst of all, they demand that Curtiss pay them royalties on all past money he has earned, arguing that all the airplanes he has built and prizes he has won infringe upon their patent.
Their unyielding position and stony delivery leave Curtiss speechless. He can think of little to say except that he will take the matter under consideration and the meeting ends abruptly. As the story goes, Curtiss wanders the unfamiliar streets of Dayton until late that evening when he decides to telephone his stalwart adviser Judge Monroe Wheeler from an open drugstore. Wheeler corroborates Curtiss’s view that he can never accept such terms and hope to survive in the airplane business. He urges Curtiss to come straight home so they can think the situation through.
So Curtiss heads home. But, unlike the mechanical setbacks that he has excelled at overcoming, the legal morass leaves him stymied. He doesn’t know what his next step can possibly be. His company
is in a financial shambles. He can never afford to compete against the Wrights if he has to pay them $1,000 of every $5,000 airplane he sells. It is an untenable demand and they know it. Meanwhile, he can’t even put on exhibitions before paying spectators to raise the money to fight the Wrights in court.
Half a year earlier, Curtiss had proved himself the best airplane designer in the world. Now he faces bankruptcy and the prospect of being run out of aviation entirely.
FLIGHT OF A HERO
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
—H
ENRY
F
ORD
E
ven his extreme persistence and optimism cannot alter the dire circumstances Curtiss faces in early 1910. His company is forced to file for bankruptcy. He is forbidden from selling airplanes, pending resolution of his legal battle with the Wrights. He can’t even exhibit them.
With the help of his friend and adviser Judge Monroe Wheeler, Curtiss does get the court to allow him to post a $10,000 bond and resume aviation work while appealing Judge Hazel’s injunction. The money, in essence, will serve as an advance on royalties due to the Wrights in the event that Curtiss loses his case. Curtiss finds the money to post the bond, but he is forced several times to make payroll out of his own dwindling pocket. Even worse, given his precar
ious legal situation, he doesn’t know where he can turn for a loan, and his company cannot pay all its creditors.
In reviewing his options with Wheeler, Curtiss recognizes an opportunity in the most tantalizing aviation contest of the day. Joseph Pulitzer, the wealthy publisher of the
New York World,
has offered a $10,000 “Hudson-Fulton Prize” to the first aviator to fly from Albany to Manhattan. The newspaperman’s prize money could help keep Curtiss’s aviation business alive during the lawsuit with the Wrights.
There is a problem, though: almost everyone deems the flight from Albany to New York City to be impossible. Not one airplane pilot has stepped forward to try to meet Pulitzer’s challenge. In fact, no one in the country has ever attempted this kind of flight from one city to another.
Curtiss doesn’t know if he can do it, but he does know that he desperately needs the money. And, impossible or not, it is one of very few promising options he sees. Even more than the allure of the prize money, he comes to see the Hudson River flight as a kind of redemptive project—a way to somehow surmount his legal woes.
Curtiss first raises the subject one evening at the dinner table with Lena and the Genungs. Harry and Martha Genung, loyal as ever to Curtiss and still living in the back of his house, listen intently to Curtiss’s idea as does Lena. And the three unite to try to discourage the outlandish notion. The flight, they argue, is too risky.
Lena, who has always supported Curtiss’s hazardous forays into aviation, worries this time. A flight from Albany to Manhattan, she says, tempts fate. Not only does it mean flying some 150 miles over unknown territory; she shudders to think of the perils of piloting an airplane over water. On this latter point, Lena’s concern helps sharpen Curtiss’s thinking. Hoping to win her over, he says that he will attach flotation devices to his new airplane.
The more Curtiss thinks about this idea, the more he likes it. If successful, he realizes, such a design could make the river—and all bodies of water—relatively safe terrain to fly over.
Before long, Curtiss draws Kleckler into the secret project, and the two begin to work out the technical details of building an airplane that can go the distance—and float on water. Curtiss remains cognizant of the dangers involved in his proposed adventure, but as he and Kleckler tackle the particulars and calculate the aircraft’s requirements, he becomes ever more confident.
No sooner has Curtiss set his mind on the Albany–Manhattan flight than he realizes the intricate planning it entails. Compared with even a lengthy aerial demonstration at an exhibition, the flight means facing unknown risks both in the air and below. Curtiss arms himself with maps, weather data, and sketches. He makes several trips along the Hudson by train and boat to study the route. In signature fashion, he becomes a juggernaut of action even as those closest to him remain skeptical.
Over the next few weeks, Curtiss learns as much as he can about the wind patterns along his proposed flight path. By contacting the U.S. Weather Bureau, he determines that the prevailing winds in the Hudson River valley are from the northwest. Based on this information, he decides to make the flight southward from Albany. It feels like the right choice. Plus, he knows from experience that engine trouble is most likely to occur soon after takeoff: the Albany end of the trip will afford far more open space if he needs to make an emergency landing.
Meanwhile, Curtiss and Kleckler try a number of ideas before settling upon the design for the new aircraft’s flotation gear. Ulti
mately, they fit an airtight metal pontoon beneath each wing and, from Baldwin’s balloon cloth, they sew five small, inflated air bags onto the undercarriage of the airplane’s frame. As Curtiss notes later, the airplane he will dub the
Albany Flier
is the world’s first “amphibian plane.” It cannot take off from water (Curtiss will solve that problem later) but, as he and Kleckler will soon prove in tests on Lake Keuka, it can handily accomplish a water landing. And, of utmost importance, the
Albany Flier,
boasting the most powerful motor Curtiss and Kleckler have yet produced, is strong and steady in a variety of air conditions.
That April, having posted the bond in the Wright lawsuit, Curtiss is free to head south to test the new airplane in a series of exhibition flights. Lena accompanies him and, at an aviation meet in Memphis, he takes her up in the new machine as a passenger. As the couple flies high above the Memphis fairgrounds, Lena marvels at the world spread out beneath her like a patchwork quilt of greens and browns. It is her first and only flight in an early plane. “I enjoyed it immensely,” she tells reporters later. “I wasn’t one particle afraid.” And, as Curtiss has undoubtedly hoped, the experience quells some of her concern about his plans for the extended Hudson River flight.
Giving them just a few days’ notice, Curtiss telephones the Aero Club of New York, designated by Pulitzer as official observers for the flight. He notifies the club officers that he will attempt to fly for the prize on Thursday morning, May 26. He also sends a formal announcement to the
New York World.
“I have made exhaustive experiments with the object of perfecting a machine that would start from and alight on the water,” Curtiss writes. The work, he notes, is not yet completed, but he hopes to give his new aircraft “its first practical test by attempting to fly from Albany to New York
over the Hudson River, with the hope of obtaining the
World
’s most commendable Hudson-Fulton Prize.”
The news sparks headlines and much excitement. The
New York World
launches an immediate publicity campaign for the flight, including a display in the lobby of the Pulitzer Building of models and photographs about the flight and the history of aviation. Not to be outdone, the rival
New York Times
announces a coup: it will charter a special train on the New York Central’s Hudson River Line to pace the flight, carrying Mrs. Curtiss and other members of the Curtiss team. Much to the dismay of the staff at the
World,
the train will also carry
New York Times
reporters and cameramen, affording them an exclusive opportunity to keep abreast of the plane every step of the way.
With everything set for the flight, Curtiss sets out for Albany with his small team, including Lena, Henry Kleckler, and a few other Hammondsport hands. Upon their arrival, they check into the Ten Eyck Hotel, whose proprietor, Jacob Ten Eyck, not coincidentally, is the head of the newly formed Aero Club of Albany. Ten Eyck, naturally ecstatic to be privy to the excitement, generously offers every assistance he can as Curtiss and the team ready for the flight.
There is much to be done, not the least of which is to find a suitable spot for takeoff. Back in Hammondsport, Captain Baldwin told Curtiss about a flat plain on Van Rensselaer Island at the southern edge of Albany. With Ten Eyck’s directions, the group heads there directly. Low and flat, with an open view of the river, it is ideal. At a meadow beside a cornfield, Curtiss bargains with a local farmer to lease his fallow field for a few days. The farmer suggests a fee of $100, but Curtiss, pleading poverty without having to exaggerate,
satisfies the farmer with prompt payment of a crisp five-dollar bill instead.
The group raises a tent at the edge of the meadow and begins to unpack the boxes containing the
Albany Flier.
Leaving Kleckler in charge, Curtiss and Lena set out to find a riverboat to take them down the Hudson for a final inspection. On board, Curtiss plies the crew with questions about the weather and winds along the river, corroborating the information he has already gathered: he will likely encounter the strongest and most dangerous winds past the southern Catskills, by the ominous-sounding Breakneck Ridge and Storm King Mountain.
The close inspection of the route is essential not just to gather information about the wind but also to study the topography. The rules set by Pulitzer allow up to two stops along the route, provided the journey is made within a twenty-four-hour period. There is no thought of a nonstop flight because no airplane at the time could carry the weight of enough fuel to cover such a great distance. As a result, Curtiss needs to reconnoiter suitable landing sites along the route.
After an overnight stay with Lena in Manhattan, Curtiss learns from the officers of the Aero Club that his old friend Augustus Post, now secretary of the organization, will accompany him back to Albany. Post will serve as the club’s official observer and is thrilled for the opportunity. The two men turn to marveling at how quickly aviation has progressed. Post begins by recalling that it has been less than two years since he witnessed Curtiss’s mile-long
June Bug
flight in Hammondsport. Not too long before that, Curtiss counters, when the AEA moved operations to Hammondsport in 1907, Post was there when the team members wracked their brains about how to get aloft at all.
En route to Albany, Curtiss and Post stop in Poughkeepsie to inspect possible landing sites. Their first prospect—the campus of Vassar College—has too many trees. Far better, they decide, is an area commonly known as Camelot some three miles south of Poughkeepsie with open farmland near the river.
Before they are through, they also visit the large, open grounds of the New York State Hospital for the Insane perched on a hill above Poughkeepsie. There, the superintendent, a Dr. Taylor, shows them around the grounds. As Curtiss later remembers, their guide chuckled “when I told him that I intended stopping there on my way down the river in a flying machine.”
“Sure you can land here,” Dr. Taylor said, unable to resist a joke. “Most of you flying machine inventors end up here anyway.”
May 26 arrives clear and promising, but, true to form, Curtiss will not attempt the flight until the skies are utterly calm. “The weather bureau promised repeatedly, fair weather, with light winds,” Curtiss recalls, “but couldn’t live up to promises.” For the next three days, ready to make an early start, Curtiss wakes at daybreak—normally the time of day with the least wind. On these days, he remembers, the newspapermen and officials, not to mention crowds of curious spectators, “rubbed the sleep out of their eyes” and headed to Van Rensselaer Island. Each day, however, Curtiss recounts, “the wind was there ahead of us and it blew all day long.”
On these long, anxious days, Curtiss passes the time intently checking every nut, bolt, and turnbuckle on his machine, tightening them and coating them with shellac to keep them from vibrating loose. As he repeatedly reassures reporters, he has confidence in his airplane, but he will not risk the possibility of strong gusts around
Storm King Mountain and Breakneck Ridge. He will wait for the wind to be just right.
As Curtiss remembers it, “The newspapers of New York City sent a horde of reporters.” And, as the days wear on, hard-boiled band that they are, the members of the press become increasingly impatient. As Curtiss notes, “I have always observed that newspapermen, who work at a high tension, cannot endure delay when there is a good piece of news in prospect.” Stuck there in the middle of a lonely meadow on a seemingly endless vigil in the boondocks, they badger and taunt Curtiss. One reporter makes a big show of laying odds with the others that Curtiss won’t follow through. Others charge that Curtiss is just out for free advertising. About this time, a Poughkeepsie newspaper even gripes about him in an editorial, writing: “Curtiss gives us a pain in the neck. All those who are waiting to see him go down the river are wasting their time.”
Nonetheless, the public grows more and more excited as news of the impending flight spreads. Each day, scores of inquisitive onlookers arrive for the chance to inspect the strange flying machine and its pilot up close. Some even set up camp at the edge of the field.
Finally, on Sunday morning, May 29, at the crack of dawn, the air is still. To make sure, Curtiss calls the Poughkeepsie police station and gets just the news he wants: there isn’t even enough breeze to flap the flag at the local courthouse. He knows the time has come and prepares to leave Albany immediately.
After a hasty breakfast, Lena heads straight to the train, with Augustus Post, Henry Kleckler, and the others. Except for one
New York Times
reporter and a photographer, both of whom barely manage to rouse themselves in time, they will be the only passengers aboard.
Out at Van Rennselaer Island, Curtiss puts on his flying outfit in the makeshift tent. He will make the flight in a pair of fisherman’s rubberized waders that come up to his armpits, a cork life jacket, and a snug-fitting cap. Following Bleriot’s example, he also dons a pair of goggles. It is a look that, for years hence, will become de rigueur for pilots. As for the waders, Curtiss later explains that they are not intended so much for the prospect of a water landing as for the warmth they will provide. After all, despite the warm day, he will be flying in the open, hundreds of feet in the air at a speed of roughly fifty miles per hour.
Curtiss is all business now, but he feels a tinge of regret that both Kleckler and Lena, having gone directly to the train, aren’t present to lend him moral support. He makes do with the competent help of Clarence White and Elmer Robinson, two younger mechanics who have accompanied him on the adventure. By this point, after all, not much remains to be done; Curtiss has checked and rechecked every inch of the airplane countless times. With no fanfare, he takes his seat in the front of the airplane.
