Authors: Tom D. Crouch
On November 19, Hart Berg drove Orv out to Santos’s old flying field at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Issy was very busy that spring and summer, thanks largely to the activities of Gabriel Voisin, whom Orville was about to meet for the first time.
The partnership forged by Voisin and Blériot in the wake of the Archdeacon glider tests of 1905 had collapsed. Convinced that he was wasting his genius attempting to build and fly machines designed by his much less talented employers, Voisin launched a new partnership with his brother Charles late in 1906.
Voisin had a vision of a new powered machine capable of winning the Grand Prix established by Deutsch and Archdeacon. The craft, a pusher biplane with a canard elevator and a box-kite tail, was a mix of the basic Wright structural elements with bits and pieces of Hargrave, Pénaud, and a dash of Santos-Dumont for good measure. Voisin was not a rich man, however. Before he could build his craft, he needed a buyer.
Henry Kapferer, a well-known engineer and automobile builder, had assisted Edouard Surcouf in the design of the
Ville de Paris
, an airship commissioned by Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe. Surcouf, recognizing in Kapferer a rich enthusiast ready to invest in aeronautics, introduced him to his friend Voisin, who sold Kapferer on his plans for a dream machine that would capture the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize.
Kapferer, attempting to cut corners, declined to purchase the 50-hp Antoinette engine recommended by the Voisins, insisting on a less
expensive 10-hp Bouchet. The underpowered machine refused to leave the ground during its initial tests at Sartouville. Nevertheless, the experience was valuable for the Voisins, who set out to find another patron to fund a second, more advanced model of their new basic design.
Late in 1906, Kapferer brought Léon Delagrange to one of his meetings with Voisin. The designer listened politely to plans for a fantastic aerial contrivance, then showed his visitor a model of a slightly larger version of the Kapferer machine. Delagrange took the bait. Eight days later he placed an order for the airplane.
The first flight test of the Voisin-Delagrange I took place on February 20, 1907. It ended in near disaster when the machine literally broke in half during the takeoff run. Repairs were complete within a week, but the craft was damaged in precisely the same way on February 28.
They had worked most of the bugs out by the end of March when Charles Voisin finally nursed it into the air, covering 60 meters in 6 short seconds. Other hops followed during the summer and fall, including a flight of 500 meters in 40 seconds on November 5 with Delagrange at the controls; but the Voisin brothers were convinced that they had accomplished all that they could with their second machine.
That summer, Gabriel and Charles stumbled onto their third customer, Henry Edgar Mumford Farman, a son of Thomas Farman, the long-time Paris correspondent for the London
Evening Standard
. An Englishman by birth, Farman, who preferred to spell his first name Henri, was raised and educated in France, and spoke only halting English. He eventually regularized his position by accepting French citizenship.
Like Voisin, Farman first tried his hand at gliding, flying a home-built version of the Chanute-Herring glider. His next step was to approach Gabriel Voisin who, in spite of his limited experience, seemed to know more about the construction of flying machines than anyone else in France.
The Voisin-Farman I was built in a workshop in the Paris suburb of Billancourt during the fall of 1907. It was apparent that the Voisin frères had learned a great deal from their first two projects—and that Henri Farman was a natural aviator. His first attempt to fly the machine at Issy on September 30 resulted in a hop of 30 meters. Back in the air on October 15, he stretched the distance to 285 meters.
Finally, on October 26, he made four flights, the last of which—2,350 feet in 52
3
/
5
seconds—won the Archdeacon Cup.
In less than two months, while Wilbur and Orville were struggling to make some headway with ministry officials, Henri Farman had electrified France. And the greatest moment was yet to come. All of fashionable Paris was headed toward Issy on the afternoon of November 18, the day on which Farman would try for the Deutsch-Archdeacon Grand Prix for the first circular flight of one kilometer.
35
Wilbur and Hart Berg had scarcely stepped from their automobile that afternoon when Archdeacon came rushing up, gesticulating wildly and shouting: “Now, where are the Wrights?” Within moments, Orville was surrounded by newsmen. “There were several hundred cameras on the scene,” Orv recalled, “and not one that failed to take a snap at us….”
36
Attention quickly shifted to the action on the field. Farman ran up the engine, took off, and flew 1,500 meters in an almost complete circle. It was not easy. The pilot sat behind a wheel that could be moved fore and aft to operate the elevator, and turned to the right or left for rudder control. Farman had to turn with the rudder alone, relying on the dihedral to keep the tips balanced. Should a bank become too steep, the pilot had no recourse but to use additional rudder. It was not a system designed to provide safe turns.
Farman did not capture the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize that day; he achieved that goal two months later, on January 13, 1908. The Aéro-Club judges who served as official witnesses for the flight on November 18 ruled that he had not quite closed his circle, and that the wheels of his machine had touched the earth during the course of the flight.
Orville Wright was the only man present in a position to criticize Farman’s wide and wobbly turn. None of that mattered to the spectators who swarmed around Farman when he landed. For men and women who had never seen the Wrights fly, Farman had performed a miracle.
When pressed by reporters for comment on the rapid progress being made by French experimenters, Orville explained that he and his brother “never liked to pass criticisms on the work of others.” Time would show “whether the methods of control used in the Far-man machine are adequate to meet the conditions encountered in windy weather.” Nor had Wilbur’s opinion changed. “The French aeroplanists are busy,” he explained to Chanute, “but up to present we see no indication of a practical machine in the near future.”
37
The Wrights claimed to have flown, but to the French the excuses that they offered for not exhibiting their machine or trying for the rich prizes that were available sounded hollow. Santos, Delagrange, and Farman had flown in full view of the public. There was little doubt as to where Archdeacon stood on the matter:
The famous Wright brothers may today claim all they wish. If it is true—and I doubt it more and more—that they were the first to fly through the air, they will not have the glory before History. They would only have had to eschew these incomprehensible affectations of mystery, and to carry out their experiments in broad daylight, like Santos-Dumont and Farman, and before official judges, surrounded by thousands of spectators. The first
authentic
experiments in powered aviation have taken place in France; they will progress in France; and the famous fifty kilometers announced by the Wrights will, I am sure, be beaten by us as well before they will have decided to show their phantom machine.
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D
uring his voyage home from Europe in November 1907, Wilbur concluded that the past two years had not been a total waste. They had made important contacts, and a number of high-ranking officials in Britain, France, and Germany now believed their claims. But they had not sold the airplane, and at present, prospects were bleak. “We will spend the winter getting some more machines ready for the spring trade,” he wrote to Milton from aboard the
Baltic
. “Then we will probably put out a sign, ‘Opening day, all goods below cost.’”
1
There was one more route left. The conversations with Frank Lahm, Jr., and the receipt of yet another letter from the Board of Ordnance and Fortification suggested that they might still strike a bargain in America.
Landing in New York on November 22, Wilbur went straight to the Flint offices for a conference with Frank Cordley. The following day he caught the train for Washington, where he spent a rainy weekend waiting for government offices to open on Monday. General William Crozier, senior officer of the Board; General James Allen, Chief Signal Officer; and Major Lawson M. Fuller met with him on the morning of November 25.
2
For the first time, Wilbur recognized that the Army was seriously interested in his invention. And the Wrights were ready. They had, in fact, decided that their rock bottom price to the U.S. government would be $25,000, a figure Will mentioned at this first meeting. The officers demurred. They could draw up to $10,000 from an existing
experimental fund, but a $25,000 price tag would require a congressional appropriation. Will left the meeting convinced that the Army would not take effective action before he and Orv flew in Europe in the spring. A second meeting in Washington did not alter that assessment.
3
But Wilbur underestimated his own impact. The Board, impressed by his presentation, reached into a small fund left over from the Spanish-American War to obtain the required $25,000. On December 23, General James Allen issued a solicitation for bids for the construction of an airplane.
The “Advertisement and Specification for a Heavier-Than-Air Flying Machine” required that the machine carry a pilot and passenger a distance of 125 miles at a speed of 40 miles per hour. It must remain aloft for at least one hour, land without damage, “and also be capable of dismounting and loading on an Army wagon to be transported.” Moreover, it should be designed to permit “an intelligent man to become proficient in its use within a reasonable length of time.”
4
The release of Signal Corps Specification No. 486 drew much negative comment from the press and the aeronautical community. A writer for the
New York Globe
remarked that
A machine such as described in the Signal Corps specifications would record the solution of all the difficulties in the way of the heavier-than-air airship, and finally give mankind almost as complete control of the air as it now has of the land and water. It … would, in short, be probably the most epoch-making invention in the history of civilization. Nothing in any way approaching such a machine has ever been constructed—the Wright brothers claim still awaits public confirmation—and the man who has achieved such a success would have, or at least should have, no need of competing in a contest where the successful bidder might be given his trial because his offer was a few hundred or thousand dollars lower than that of someone else.
5
The American Magazine of Aeronautics
, unofficial mouthpiece of the Aero Club of America crowd, argued that “there is not a known flying machine in the world which could fulfill these requirements.” James Means, editor of the
Aeronautical Annuals
which had so influenced the Wrights, remarked to Chanute that while Minerva sprang “fully fledged from the head of Jupiter … I hardly think that the perfect flying machine will appear in such sudden fashion.”
6
Wilbur recognized the truth. Major George Squier had taken the Wrights at their word, drafting a specification that described the performance of their machine. “When I first learned that the Board
was advertising for bids I doubted its good faith,” Wilbur told Chanute, “but am now inclined to think that I did them an injustice in suspecting such a thing.”
7
Orville arrived home from Paris on December 13. The brothers spent the next few weeks corresponding with the Board to ensure that they understood all of the requirements. On January 27, 1908, they submitted their formal proposal to sell a flying machine as described in the circular for $25,000. It was the only bid that the Board expected to receive. In fact, there were forty-one proposals when the competition closed on February 1.
They ranged in price from a bargain-basement $850 to $1 million. One fellow, a federal prison inmate, valued his machine at $45 to $65 a pound, depending on the model selected; another bidder promised speeds of up to 500 miles per hour. Nineteen of the bids were dismissed out of hand. All but three of the remaining competitors were disqualified by their inability to post the required 10 percent of the bid price as a bond.
The successful low bidder, J. F. Scott of Chicago, priced his nonexistent machine at $1,000 because he had only $100 to offer as a bond. Embarrassed by his unexpected success, and recognizing his complete inability to meet the specifications, he withdrew. The field was now reduced to two bidders, the Wrights and Augustus Herring. Technically, Herring had won the competition with a low bid of $20,000. The officials of the Board were in a quandary. They did not believe that Herring could fulfill the contract. Still, he was a well-known figure with a long-standing reputation in aeronautics; they could not simply discount his offer. The only way to save the situation was to find an additional $20,000 that would permit them to accept both surviving bids.
8
Why had Herring entered the competition? He had long since ceased active work in aeronautics—the Wrights knew that, the Army knew it, and Herring knew it. Yet he was convinced that he had accomplished something significant prior to 1900 and that he ought to be rewarded for his efforts. As the low bidder, Herring would at least remain in the public eye. There might yet be a way to turn the situation to his advantage.
For their part, the Wrights were fully satisfied. They saw Herring as a harmless comic figure who could do them no ill. More important, after more than two years of effort, they had a contract. Two contracts, in fact.
Hart Berg had closed a deal with the French. Wilbur traveled to New York on March 15 to check out the particulars. The new contract would be signed not with the government but with a syndicate headed by the financier Lazare Weiller, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, and other French capitalists. La Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne, as it was to be called, would purchase the Wrights’ French patents and the right to manufacture, sell, and license Wright airplanes in France. After providing a series of demonstration flights, the Wrights would receive 500,000 francs upon delivery of the first machine, 50 percent of the founders’ shares in the company, and 20,000 francs apiece for each of four additional aircraft to be delivered to the company. Although the deal was not quite as sweet as they had hoped, the Wrights agreed to the terms. Will would return to France to fulfill the new contract with the syndicate, while Orv remained in America to fly for the Army.
9