Authors: Tom D. Crouch
His superiors agreed that the Wrights were probably telling the truth, and that “the manufacture of a flying machine for scouting purposes has actually been effected.”
10
In view of their rigidity, however, the committee recommended dropping the negotiations completely and establishing a government-sponsored flying-machine research effort. What the Wrights had done, English engineers could do. Brigadier-General James Wolfe Murray, Master-General of the Ordnance, and Colonel Charles B. Raddon, Director of Artillery, made the final decision. There would be no more dealings with the Wrights until they flew for Colonel Foster.
Perhaps the Wrights could never have closed a deal with the British. The desire of military officials to develop a home-grown flying machine was inevitable, particularly among officers like Capper, who knew the thing was possible.
Unable to make headway in either England or America, the Wrights turned their attention to France. Wilbur wrote to Ferber on October 9, giving him the first accurate account of the 1905 season and announcing that they were prepared to discuss the sale of a flying machine to the French government.
Ferber presented the letter to Colonel Bertrand, in charge of balloon and airship research for the French Army, who replied that while no money was available for such a purchase, he would consider recommending the appointment of a commission to investigate the Wright claims.
Ferber’s note to the Wrights was true to form. He asked for their selling price, but warned that, “considering the progress I have made since June the Government is no longer interested in paying as great a sum as it was … at the time of my last two letters.”
11
“No one in the world can better appreciate your accomplishment as much as we can,” Wilbur responded. “But even though France already has reached a high degree of success, it may wish to avail itself of our discoveries, partly to supplement its own work, and partly to accurately inform itself of the state of the art as it will exist in other countries which buy the secrets of our motor machine.”
12
The price was 1 million francs, about $200,000.
While awaiting Ferber’s reply, the Wrights sent out three more accounts of the 1905 flights. The first went to Pat Alexander; the second to Georges Besançon, editor of
L’Aérophile;
and the third to Carl Dienstbach, the American correspondent of the
Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen
. They were hoping to hurry the French along, reawaken interest in England, and perhaps catch the attention of the Germans as well.
Alexander read his letter aloud at a meeting of the Royal Aeronautical Society. The news from America was well received and generally believed, but it had no impact on the stalled negotiations with the British government. In France and Germany, however, it created a small furor.
Besançon published the Wrights’ letter along with a poor translation of their correspondence with Ferber. Seeking to underscore the military advantages of their invention to the French, the brothers had commented that the Kaiser was in a “truculent mood.” Somehow, it sounded worse in the
L’Aérophile
translation. When their letter to Dienstbach appeared in the
Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen
in February 1906, it was accompanied by an editorial that questioned the validity of their claims and took the brothers to task for “attacking” Kaiser Wilhelm.
13
American editors picked up the story from the European papers. Most of them had heard nothing about the Wrights since Kitty Hawk; skeptical then, nothing had happened since to change their minds. An editorial on “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances,” in
Scientific American
on January 13, 1906, summed up the general reaction:
Unfortunately, the Wright brothers are hardly disposed to publish any substantiation or to make public experiments, for reasons best known to themselves. If such sensational and tremendously important experiments are being conducted in a not very remote part of the country, on a subject in which almost everybody feels the most profound interest, is it possible to believe that the enterprising American reporter, who, it is well known, comes down the chimney when the door is locked in his face—even if he has to scale a fifteen-story sky-scraper to do so—would not have ascertained all about them and published them long ago? Why particularly … should the Wrights desire to sell their invention to the French government for a “million” francs? Surely their own is the first to which they would be likely to apply. We certainly want more light on the subject.
14
The French agreed. The Wrights had been useful to enthusiasts like Ferber, Archdeacon, and Deutsch de la Meurthe, who could hold them up as a warning of the progress being made in America. If they had really flown up to twenty-five miles, however, the game was over.
Frank Lahm was one of the first to react. A native of Canton, Ohio, born in 1847, he had come to Paris in 1880 to sell Remington typewriters and stayed to establish a company of his own. By 1905, he was a very wealthy man.
Fascinated by balloons, Lahm made his first flight in 1902. Within two years he was a qualified balloon pilot and a leading member of the Aéro-Club de France. Patrick Alexander told him about the Wrights in mid-October 1905. Excited by the possibility that two fellow Ohioans had succeeded in flying, he asked Nelson Bierce, a Dayton friend, to look into the matter. Bierce reported that the brothers were men of good character who were conducting mysterious experiments with a flying machine.
Next, Lahm contacted his brother-in-law, Henry M. Weaver, Sr., a Mansfield, Ohio, manufacturer. After some confusion, Weaver arranged for a personal meeting with the Wrights at the Algonquin Hotel in Dayton on December 3. They introduced him to the Beards, Amos Stauffer, the Billmans, Huffman, and others who had seen them fly. Weaver wired Frank Lahm that evening: “Claims fully verified, results by mail.”
15
Weaver was not the only visitor to Dayton that month. Robert Coquelle, a reporter for
L’Auto
, arrived on December 12. He interviewed Wilbur and Orville, and met their witnesses. Coquelle cabled his editor: “It is impossible to doubt the success of their experiments.”
16
The first installment of Coquelle’s four-part story, “Conquête de l’Air par Deux Marchands de Cycles,” appeared in
L’Auto
on December 23. When the members of the Aviation Committee of the Aéro-Club met that evening, they were divided into a majority that regarded Coquelle’s story as a complete fabrication and a handful who believed there might be some truth in the Wright claims.
They met again on the evening of December 29 to hear Henry Weaver’s full report to Frank Lahm. Chairman Archdeacon had difficulty raising his falsetto above the hubbub, and resorted to slapping a metal ruler on the podium to call the meeting to order. Questions were shouted from the floor. If the Wrights had flown twenty-five miles, why had the American newspapers not splashed the story across their front pages? Why did they not come to France to try for the 50,000-franc prize established by Deutsch and Archdeacon for the first heavier-than-air machine to complete a circular flight of one kilometer? Who had financed their effort, and why was the American government paying no attention?
The meeting closed with the consensus that Weaver and Coquelle had been hoodwinked. Lahm thought that of all those present, only he, Besançon, and Ferber believed the Wrights had actually accomplished all they claimed.
Ferber said little that evening. He was the only person there who knew that, as they spoke, a French emissary was in Dayton concluding a contract for the purchase of a flying machine from Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Fearing that Colonel Bertrand would drag his feet, Ferber had taken the Wrights’ $200,000 proposition to M. Henri Letellier, publisher of the newspaper
Le Journal
. Letellier, who knew a good story when he heard one, jumped at the opportunity to help, and placed his secretary, Arnold Fordyce, at Ferber’s disposal. Fordyce left for Dayton immediately, arriving just after Christmas 1905.
Ferber sent a short note to the Wrights, alerting them that Fordyce was on his way and leading them to believe that he represented the French government. Fordyce was quick to correct the misunderstanding; he represented a private syndicate, whose members included both Ferber and Letellier. These gentlemen planned to purchase a Wright machine as a gift to the nation, in return for which they expected nothing more than the gratitude of their countrymen—and perhaps the Legion of Honor.
Puzzled, the Wrights agreed to deal with Fordyce, but insisted that the airplane would have to be turned over to the French military. In addition, the sale of a machine to France could not prohibit the brothers from continuing their negotiations with the U.S. government.
Fordyce accepted the conditions and signed an optional agreement with the Wrights on December 30. The members of the syndicate agreed to deposit $5,000 in escrow with the Paris branch of J. P. Morgan & Company by February 5, 1906; they would then have two months in which to raise the rest of the $200,000 purchase price. If the full amount was on deposit by April 5, the Wrights would journey to France and make the required demonstration flights. Otherwise, they would keep the $5,000 and the option would lapse.
Letellier had no intention of putting up the money himself. Once he received word from Fordyce that the deal was closed, he rushed to the War Ministry. While ministry officials were not certain what credence to give the Wright claims, they were willing to risk an initial $5,000. In return for serving as broker, Letellier received exclusive rights to the story for
Le Journal
.
Why did the French government move so quickly? For the same reason that the American War Department had taken a chance on Langley in 1898: a nation standing on the brink of war is more likely to invest in new weapons than one at peace. In the winter of 1905, France was locked in a struggle with Germany for control of Morocco. A scouting airplane might be just the thing to search the vast Sahara Desert for an approaching Boche army.
Having invested 25,000 francs in the option, the French government immediately dispatched a commission to meet with the Wrights. Two members of the group, Fordyce and Commandant Henri Bonel, Chief of Engineers for the French General Staff, arrived in New York on March 18, 1906. Bonel, the head of the commission, had served as an official observer at the trials of Clément Ader’s
Avion
in 1897. Ader, who constructed his machine with official support from the French government, failed to fly. The experience had soured Bonel on the prospects for an early success with the airplane—he would be a difficult man for the Wrights to convince.
Captain Jules Fournier and Henri Régnier, both of the French Embassy staff in Washington, and Walter V. Berry, an American attorney retained by Ambassador J. J. Jusserand, completed the official party. In view of the $5,000 option payment and the quality of the commission members, the Wrights realized that the French government was taking them seriously indeed.
The commissioners arrived in Dayton on March 30. The Wrights refused to show them the machine, but they did arrange one more round of meetings with local people who had seen them fly. In addition, they displayed photos of the 1905 airplane cruising effortlessly over Huffman Prairie. The evidence was overwhelming. Even the skeptical Bonel was convinced.
Meanwhile, officials in Paris were having second thoughts. The crisis in Morocco had passed, the issue resolved by an international conference in favor of the French. Ministry officials telegraphed a barrage of questions to the commissioners. Could the airplane operate at altitudes above 1,000 feet? Could both the speed and weight-carrying capacity be increased?
Bonel wired the answers back—along with repeated recommendations that the government take up the option before it was too late—to no avail. The ministry sent a final telegram on the afternoon of April 5, requesting a one-year extension of the exclusive option and a guarantee that a 600-foot minimum altitude would be achieved during the demonstration trials. The Wrights refused and the commission was recalled.
Shortly thereafter, the brothers reconsidered and cabled Bonel, accepting all conditions provided that the exclusivity clause did not apply to the U.S. War Department. The War Ministry refused to reopen negotiations. The Wrights were $5,000 richer, but they had not sold their airplane. Like the British, the French were unwilling to risk public ridicule and censure over the expenditure of $200,000 for a flying machine they had never seen fly.
The Wrights were back at the starting point. Pat Alexander arrived for another visit in late April. “As near as we can make out,” Wilbur told Chanute, “his trip was for the purpose of learning whether or not there was any truth in the reports that we had made a contract with the French.”
17
They were now firmly convinced that Alexander was a British spy. How else could he have known about the commission, whose presence in Dayton was so secret that the members had registered at their hotels under false names?
The Wrights took it as a good sign. Perhaps His Majesty’s Government was reconsidering. A letter to the War Office on May 8 led to a new round of discussions on a fixed price contract. On July 31, Wilbur wrote to Lieutenant Colonel A. E. W. Count Gleichen, who had replaced Foster as military attaché, offering to sell a machine and patent rights for $100,000. An additional $100,000 would buy exclusive use of “our knowledge and discoveries together with formulae and tables which make the designing of flyers of other sizes and speeds a science as exact as that of marine engineering.”
18
Gleichen visited Dayton on August 8. Like Capper, he was impressed. The brothers could deliver on their promises, but they would not budget on price. Gleichen pointed out that the machine alone would be worth little without the “knowledge and discoveries.” The bill would be $200,000.
Even Capper agreed that the price was excessive, particularly as the value of the engineering data could not be gauged before purchase. Moreover, he now had a heavier-than-air program of his own under way at Farnborough, and was sure that his team could turn out a flying machine “within a reasonable time on much the same lines as the Wright brothers, but … superior to it in several respects.”
19
Capper, recently promoted to superintendent of the British Balloon Factory at Farnborough, in Surrey, naturally preferred to concentrate on his own projects. In 1907 he would barely escape death when he flew a tailless glider designed by J. W. Dunne into a stone wall. A powered version of the Dunne craft developed the following year was interesting, but could never rival the Wright machine.
20