The Wright Brothers - Page 25/72

Asked during a brief discussion period what he thought of experiments being conducted by Alexander Graham Bell to hoist a man into the air with a giant kite, Wilbur replied, “It is very bad policy to ask one flying machine man about the experiments of another, because every flying machine man thinks that his method is the only correct one.”

Asked by another in the audience what he thought of the dihedral angle of the wings used by Samuel Langley, Wilbur did not hesitate to point out that Langley’s machine was tested only in dead calms when there were no side gusts to contend with and that it must be remembered “the wind usually blows.”

Nowhere in the talk had he said a word about the gasoline engine sitting in the back room of the bicycle shop at Dayton; or of his and Orville’s intense, often maddening work on propellers; or of what they would be up to at Kitty Hawk in only a matter of months. When the subject of motors came into discussion, he simply kept to the past tense. “As none of our experiments has been with power machines, my judgment . . . may be of little value.”

Day after day that June the weather in Dayton remained, as Bishop Wright recorded, “fair and mild.” For him all was much as usual. He went to the library, he wrote letters, attended church, accompanied Katharine at a high school commencement. When she headed off to Oberlin for another commencement, the house on Hawthorn Street grew quieter still.

At the shop on West Third Street it was a different story. With the help of Charlie Taylor, the brothers were on the home stretch and working harder than ever to get everything right with every piece and part of the new machine.

From Kitty Hawk Bill Tate sent word that he had installed a gasoline tank at the camp and asked how soon he could expect to see them.

On July 14 came the news that in a matter of days, Samuel Langley was to test his “latest contrivance” on the mosquito-infested banks of the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia, thirty miles south of Washington. This time it was to be a motor-powered “full-fledged airship” called “The Great Aerodrome,” capable of carrying one operator. It had cost $50,000 in public money—in Smithsonian resources and the largest appropriation yet granted by the U.S. War Department. Professor Langley and several of his friends, including Alexander Graham Bell, contributed another $20,000.

Reporters rushed to the scene, and in a flotilla of watercraft comprised of everything from catboats to steam launches converged on the giant houseboat, “the ark” as they called it, on top of which perched Langley’s machine, “the buzzard,” poised to go.

Langley himself arrived from Washington and went aboard the houseboat only to disappear inside, refusing to show himself, despite earnest pleas for interviews. When a storm struck, he and his party of mechanics and scientists went back to Washington. Then, with the storm over, the young man who was expected to fly the machine, Charles Manly, hurried off to Washington, but on returning the next day refused to say anything.

At last, on the morning of August 8, the air perfectly still, an unmanned, quarter-scale model of the Langley machine was launched and traveled some 1,000 feet before crashing into the river. “AIRSHIP AS A SUBMARINE” ran the mocking headline in the New York Times. Manly went before reporters to declare the flight entirely successful, but beyond that would say no more.

How Wilbur and Orville felt about all this, just as they were about to attempt the most important step in their own work, what comments were exchanged in the privacy of the workshop or at home, there is no telling. The only comment on record, in a letter Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute, was largely an expression of sympathy for Langley:

Professor Langley seems to be having rather more than his fair share of trouble just now with the pestiferous reporters and windstorms. But as the mosquitoes are reported to be very bad along the banks where the reporters are encamped he has some consolation.

Work on their “whopper flying machine,” as they had come to call it, continued through the mounting heat of summer, the brothers and Charlie seeing to the final touches on every component, every small detail, before departure for Kitty Hawk, where, they knew, still more work would be required for the assembly of it all.

“We never did assemble the whole machine at Dayton. There wasn’t room enough,” Charlie would explain. Just the center section alone when set up in the shop, so blocked passage between the front and back rooms that to wait on customers he or one or the other of the brothers had to slip out a side door and go around to the street entrance in front.

Packing everything for shipment so there would be no damage en route became in itself a major task—motor, frame, and parts adding up to an estimated 675 pounds. By September 18, all was crated and on the train.

There was no ceremony about it or anxiousness, according to Charlie. “If there was any worry about the flying machine not working, they never showed it and I never felt it.”

Five days later Wilbur and Orville themselves were packed and on board an eastbound train.

II.

The change from the crowded, stifling hot, noisy confines of the workspace at Dayton to the open reaches of sea and sky on the Outer Banks could hardly have been greater or more welcome. They loved Kitty Hawk. “Every year adds to our comprehension of the wonders of this place,” wrote Orville to Katharine soon after arrival.

The previous winter on the Banks had been especially severe, one continuing succession of storms, the brothers were told, the rain coming down in such torrents as to make a lake that reached for miles near their camp. Ninety-mile-an-hour winds had lifted their building from its foundation and set it down several feet closer to the ocean. Mosquitoes were said to have been so thick they turned day into night, the lightning so terrible it turned night into day.

But the winds had also sculpted the sand hills into the best shape for gliding the brothers had seen, and the September days now were so glorious, conditions so ideal, that instead of turning at once to setting up camp, they put the glider from the year before back in shape and spent what Wilbur called “the finest day we ever had in practice.” They made seventy-five glides and with some practice at soaring found it easier than expected. All was looking highly favorable.

With the help of Dan Tate, a new 16 × 44-foot building in which to assemble and store the new Flyer went up in little more than a week’s time, its doors hung and hinged just as a terrific storm struck, the wind at one point blowing 75 miles per hour.

Progress on the new machine had to go forward, of course, though indoors. “Worked all day in making connections of sections of upper [wing] surface, putting in wires at rear edge and putting on some hinges,” Orville recorded on October 12 the same day Dan Tate reported that five boats had already been driven ashore between Kitty Hawk and Cape Henry.