Aircraft and Submarines

The method of progress in these preliminary experiments was, by repeated tests, to determine what form of airplane, and of what proportions, would best support a man. It was evident that for free and continuous flight it must be able to carry not only the pilot, but an engine and a store of fuel as well. Having, as they thought, determined these conditions the Wrights essayed their first flight at their home near Dayton, Ohio. It was a cold December day in 1903. The first flight, with motor and all, lasted twelve seconds; the fourth fifty-nine seconds. The handful of people who came out to witness the marvel went home jeering. In the spring of the next year a new flight was announced near Dayton. The newspapers had been asked to send reporters. A crowd of perhaps fifty persons had gathered. Again fate was hostile. The engine worked badly and the airplane refused to rise. The crowd dispersed and the newspapermen, returning the next day, met only with another disappointment.

These repeated failures in public exhibitions resulted in creating general indifference to the real progress that the Wrights were making in solving the flight problem. While the gliding experiments at Kitty-Hawk were furnishing the data for the plans on which the tens of thousands of airplanes used in the European war were afterwards built, no American newspaper was sufficiently interested to send representatives to the spot. The people of the United States were supremely indifferent. Perhaps this was due to the fact that superficially regarded the machine the Wrights were trying to perfect gave promise of usefulness only in war or in sport. We are not either a warlike or a sporting people. Ready enough to adopt a new device which seems adapted for utilitarian purposes, as is shown by the rapid multiplication of automobiles, we leave sport to our professional ball players, and our military equipment to luck.

So after continued experimental flights in the open fields near Dayton had convinced them that the practical weaknesses in their machine had been eliminated, the Wrights packed up their flyer and went to France. Before so doing they tried to get encouragement from the United States Government, but failed. Neither the government nor any rich American was willing to share the cost of further experiments. All that had been done was at their own cost, both in time and money. In France, whither they went in 1908, they had no coldness to complain of. It was then the golden day of aviation in the land which always afforded to the Knights of the Air their warmest welcome and their most liberal support. Two years had elapsed since Santos-Dumont, turning from dirigibles to 'planes, had made a flight of 238 yards. This the Wrights had at the time excelled at home but without attracting attention. France on the contrary went mad with enthusiasm, and claimed for the Brazilian the honour of first demonstrating the possibility of flight in a heavier-than-air machine. England, like the United States, was cold, clinging to the balloon long after all other nations had abandoned it. But France welcomed the Wrights with enthusiasm. They found rivals a-plenty in their field of effort. Santos-Dumont, Bleriot, Farman, Latham were all flying with airplanes, but with models radically different from that of the American brothers. Nevertheless the latter made an instant success.

From the moment they found that they had hit upon the secret of raising, supporting, and propelling an airplane, the Wrights made of their profession a matter of cold business. In many ways this was the best contribution they could possibly have made to the science of aviation, though their keen eye to the main chance did bring down on them a certain amount of ridicule. Europe laughed long at the sang-froid with which Wilbur Wright, having won the Michelin prize of eight hundred pounds, gave no heed to the applause which the assembled throng gave him as the money was transferred to him with a neat presentation speech. Without a word he divided the notes into two packets, handed one to his brother Orville, and thrust the other into his own pocket. For the glory which attended his achievement he cared nothing. It was all in the day's work. Later in the course of trials of a machine for the United States Government at Fort Myer, just across the Potomac from Washington, the Wrights seriously offended a certain sort of public sentiment in a way which undoubtedly set back the encouragement of aviation by the United States Government very seriously.

In 1909, they had received a contract from the government for a machine for the use of the Signal Service. The price was fixed at $25,000, but a bonus of $2500 was to be paid for every mile above forty miles an hour made by the machine on its trial trip. That bonus looked big to the Wrights, but it cost the cause of aviation many times its face value in the congressional disfavour it caused. Aviation was then in its infancy in the United States. Every man in Congress wanted to see the flights. But Fort Myer, whose parade was to be the testing ground, was fully fourteen miles from the Capitol, and reached only most inconveniently from Washington by trolley, or most expensively by carriage or automobile. Day after day members of the House and Senate made the long journey across the Potomac. Time and again they journeyed back without even a sight of the flyer in the hangar. One after another little flaws discovered in the machine led the aviators to postpone their flight. Investigating statesmen who thought that their position justified them in seeking special privileges were brusquely turned away by the military guard. The dusk of many a summer's night saw thousands of disappointed sightseers tramping the long road back to Washington. The climax came when on a clear but breezy day Wilbur Wright announced that the machine was in perfect condition and could meet its tests readily, but that in order to win a bigger bonus, he would postpone the flight for a day with less wind. All over Washington the threat was heard that night that Congress would vote no more money for aviation, and whether or not the incident was the cause, the sequence was that the American Congress was, until the menace of war with Germany in 1916, the most niggardly of all legislative bodies in its treatment of the flying corps. When the Wrights did finally fly they made a triumphant flight before twelve thousand spectators. The test involved crossing the Potomac, going down its north side to Alexandria, and then back to Fort Myer. Ringing cheers and the crashing strains of the military band greeted the return of the aviator, but oblivious to the enthusiasm Wilbur Wright stood beside his machine with pencil and pad computing his bonus. It figured up to five thousand dollars, and the reporters chronicled that the Wrights knew well the difference between solid coin and the bubble of reputation.

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