The Wright Brothers

  A sampling of photographs of Flyer III in action could have been requested or a visit to Huffman Prairie by someone from Washington might well have resolved the issue. Told what the response of the board had been, Octave Chanute concluded, “Those fellows are a bunch of asses.”

  Progress with the English having stalled, Wilbur informed an interested group in Paris that he and Orville were ready to discuss sale of the Flyer III to the French government.

  In the last week of 1905, Bishop Wright recorded in his diary:

  Thursday, December 28 The morning was beautiful, and a fire hardly needed. A Frenchman by the name of Arnold Fordyce came to investigate and drive a trade for a flying machine. They agreed on terms.

  Fordyce represented a syndicate of wealthy French businessmen, but the Wrights assumed the deciding authority would be the French military, which was the case. The syndicate would purchase a Wright Flyer as a gift to the French government. According to the agreement the brothers were to receive one million francs, or $200,000, for one machine, on the condition that they provided demonstration flights, during which the machine fulfilled certain requirements in altitude, distance, and speed.

  Details of the final terms were to be negotiated by a French commission assigned to come to Dayton. Meantime, a sum of 25,000 francs, or $5,000, was to be deposited in a New York bank in escrow. $200,000 was an exceedingly large sum and the $5,000 the brothers were to receive, however the further negotiations went, would more than cover all the expenses they had had since first going to Kitty Hawk.

  Saturday, December 30 In the afternoon [wrote the Bishop in his diary], Wilbur and Orville sign up the contract with Mr. Arnold Fordyce, of Paris. . . .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Capital Exhibit A

  He inspires great confidence.

  HART O. BERG

  You people at home must stop worrying! There is no need of it.

  WILBUR WRIGHT

  I.

  The four well-dressed French gentlemen and the American accompanying them were the subject of much talk almost from the moment, on March 20, 1906, when they walked into the lobby of the Beckel Hotel in Dayton to register at the front desk.

  Word was out that the “Wright boys” had made arrangements to sell their flying machine to the French. But when a reporter for the Dayton Herald inquired of the head of the delegation, Arnold Fordyce, if this were so, his reply was they had come “merely to see the sights.” He was writing a book about the customs and industries of America, he said. Dayton was one of four cities on the tour. He did add, however, and most cordially, that they hoped to call on the Wright brothers while in town.

  Arnold Fordyce had once been an actor. In truth the men had come with no other purpose than to meet with the Wrights. Three of the group, despite their business suits, were French army officers. Commandant Henri Bonel was chief of engineers of the French General Staff, the only one of the group who spoke no English and an acknowledged skeptic concerning the Wrights and their flying machine. Captains Henri Régnier and Jules Fournier were military attachés from the French embassy in Washington.

  The one American, Walter Berry, represented the French ambassador to the United States. An international attorney, Berry spent most of his time in Paris, where he figured prominently in the social life of the noted American novelist Edith Wharton and was well attuned to moving in influential circles on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The year 1906 thus far had not been particularly promising for the brothers. Their work proceeded on a new, more powerful engine, but they were doing no flying. Meanwhile, in France there was growing excitement over the progress in aviation being made by French manufacturers and such glamorous aviators as Louis Blériot and the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont, while the Paris Herald, an English language paper, mocked the brothers in an editorial titled “Fliers or Liars.”

  The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. . . . It is easy to say, “We have flown.”

  Now here were the brothers sitting down with a French delegation that had come to talk seriously. That it could be a most important step forward for all involved went without saying.

  As Bishop Wright recorded, they met above the bicycle shop every day for more than two weeks, and with the Bishop, too, sitting in on the discussions. On the evening of March 24, at the invitation of Katharine Wright, Fordyce, Commandant Bonel, and Walter Berry “supped” with the family at 7 Hawthorn Street.

  The brothers refused to show the delegation their Flyer III, but willingly provided photographs and eyewitness testimony of the plane in flight. In little time even Commandant Bonel, the skeptic of the group, was convinced, impressed primarily by the Wrights themselves and despite the language barrier.

  While no agreement resulted, the possibility of a future working arrangement with the French had been strongly reinforced and respect on both sides greatly strengthened, a point the brothers emphasized in a letter to Bonel written April 6:

  Notwithstanding the failure to reach an agreement at our final conference last evening, we shall always remain very friendly to you personally and to your country. . . . Allow us to express our hearty appreciation of your uniform fairness and courtesy throughout this long conference.

  But by now, much of the scientific world and the press had begun to change their perspective on the brothers, with Scientific American making the most notable change. In its issue of April 7, 1906, the magazine carried an article titled “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Performances,” in which eleven eyewitnesses to flights by the brothers at Huffman Prairie, in answer to twelve specific questions, affirmed that they had seen one or the other of the brothers fly in their machine in varying winds and perform all manner of movements with complete control throughout. Included, too, in the article was a letter from Charles Webbert, from whom the Wrights rented the bicycle shop, telling how in October he had witnessed Orville flying the machine for about half an hour and how the machine had traveled in large circles of about a mile around, and how the Flyer was “absolutely free from the time it left the rail upon which it started until it touched the ground in making its final landing.”

  On May 22, 1906, the patent applied for in 1903 was at last issued on the Wright Flying Machine, patent number 821,393, and through the rest of that spring and summer, preoccupation with a new engine for Flyer III went on, and flight tests continued at Huffman Prairie into the fall.

  In France, Alberto Santos-Dumont, flying what looked like a motor-powered hodgepodge of box kites, had made a public flight covering 726 feet. French aviation enthusiasts went wild with excitement. Santos-Dumont was said to have “gained the greatest glory to which man can aspire.” He had achieved “a decisive step in the history of aviation,” and “not in secret.”

  “I fancy that he is now very nearly where you were in 1904,” wrote Octave Chanute to Wilbur. “Fear that others will produce a machine capable of practical service in less than several years does not worry us,” Wilbur would reply confidently. “We have been over the course and understand how much yet remains for them to do.”

  Then came overtures from Flint & Company, a New York firm with extensive experience in marketing war materials in Europe. By December the overtures had become serious. Flint & Company was offering the Wrights $500,000 for the sales rights of their plane outside the United States. The Wrights would maintain the American market.

  By nature the more entrepreneurial of the two, Orville showed the most interest, and it was he who went to New York, met with the head of the firm, Charles Flint, and made a “deal.” Or so it seemed. Further issues required further discussion. So, early in the new year, 1907, both Orville and Wilbur took the train to New York.

  The tempo of financial possibilities was picking up considerably. In February, Germany offered $500,000 for fifty Wright Flyers, and the brothers agreed that Flint & Company should be their sales representativ
e—but only their sales representative—on a 20 percent commission everywhere except in the United States.

  Then in May came an urgent message from Charles Flint, saying the company’s European representative, Hart O. Berg, had become skeptical about the Wrights and their machine and wanted one or the other or both to come to Europe as soon as possible and make their case themselves, all expenses, of course, to be covered by Flint & Company.

  Wilbur thought Orville should go. Wilbur wanted to see to the finishing touches on the new engine and prepare the Flyer III for shipment. “I am more careful than he is,” Wilbur would explain to their father. Further, the one who went to Europe would have to act almost entirely on his own judgment without much consultation by letter or cable. Wilbur felt he was more willing to accept the consequences of any errors of judgment on Orville’s part than to have Orville blaming him if he were to go.

  Orville stubbornly disagreed, insisting that Wilbur would make the best impression in France, and Orville was right, as they all knew, including Wilbur, who “grabbed a few things” and left for New York. By Saturday, May 18, he was on board the RMS Campania, sailing past the Statue of Liberty on his way out to sea.

  An entirely new adventure had begun, unlike anything he, or any of the family, had yet experienced. Wilbur had just turned forty that April and was to be on his own far from home, separated from his family, for longer than he had ever been or ever imagined, and tested in ways he had never been.

  II.

  “I sailed this morning about 9 o’clock and we are now something over 200 miles out,” Wilbur wrote in a letter addressed to Katharine but intended for all at home. “The St. Louis and another ship started at the same time, but we have run off from them.” The Campania, part of the Cunard Line, was known as one of the finest vessels of its kind, and one of the fastest, a “flying palace of the ocean,” which Wilbur particularly liked. The ship was 622 feet in length, with two tall stacks, and burnt some five hundred tons of coal per day. The predominant interior style was Art Nouveau, with staterooms and public rooms paneled in satinwood and mahogany, and thickly carpeted.

  The weather was “splendid,” the sea smooth, and he had a cabin to himself. With only about half the usual number of passengers on board, he was able to get a $250 cabin for only $100, and he was quite happy about that, too, even if Flint was covering expenses.

  “We made 466 miles the first day,” he wrote the following evening, “and left the other boats out of sight.” The third day out he took a tour of the engine room, marveling at the scale of it all—engines half as high as an office building back home, engines that could deliver 28,000 horsepower, this in contrast to the 25 horsepower of the new engine for Flyer III. There were twelve boilers, and over one hundred furnaces. The ship’s propellers measured no less than 23 feet in diameter.

  He kept note of the miles made day by day, and walked the promenade deck five to ten miles a day. Though he wrote nothing about the food served or the other passengers, he seemed to be having a fine time.

  All went ideally until the sixth day out, when a storm hit and Wilbur had his first experience with pitch and roll on water, not in the air. “The waves are probably 10 feet high and the ship pitches considerably. Fortunately there is but little roll.” The spray was such that the promenade decks were useless. The ship had become more like a hospital, though he himself felt only “a little sick” just after breakfast.

  The last day at sea, off the Irish coast, he wrote of seeing gulls at intervals, “and how they could skim within a foot or two of the waves and in strong winds did not even have to flap their wings very much.”

  After landing at Liverpool at first light, Saturday, May 25, Wilbur went by train to London, where, at Euston Station, he was met by the Flint & Company sales representative, Hart O. Berg, an American who recognized Wilbur the moment he stepped off the train.

  “I have never seen a picture of him, or had him described to me in any way,” Berg would write to Charles Flint, “. . . and either I am a Sherlock Holmes, or Wright has the peculiar glint of genius in his eye which left no doubt in my mind as to who he was.”

  Berg also noticed Wilbur’s luggage consisted of a single leather grip the size of a doctor’s bag and his wardrobe left much to be desired. But on the way to the hotel, it was Wilbur who suggested it might be “advisable” for him to buy a new suit. At a tailor shop in the Strand, Berg “fixed him up” with both a dress suit and a tuxedo. When Wilbur’s account of these purchases reached home, Katharine wrote at once to tell him how “Orv had marched off to Perry Meredith’s [haberdashery] this morning and ordered the same for himself.”

  Intent on wasting no time, Berg told Wilbur there was little likelihood of doing business in England and the sooner they left for France the better. The main effort would be made in Paris. They also found themselves disagreeing on the best approach—whether to deal with governments primarily or with individuals, Berg much in favor of individuals. Either way, both agreed it would be best not to make much of Wilbur’s presence in Europe, not for the time being at least.

  Summing things up, at the close of his long memorandum to Charles Flint, Berg stressed how pleased he was with Wilbur’s whole bearing and attitude. “He inspires great confidence,” Berg wrote, “and I am sure he will be a capital Exhibit A.”

  How Wilbur felt about Berg at this point is not clear. Though fellow Americans of roughly the same age, their backgrounds and experiences in life could hardly have been more different. Born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia and raised in New York, Berg had attended private schools until sent off to Europe to be trained as an engineer at Liège in Belgium. In the time since he had become a pioneer in the manufacture of pistols, machine guns, automobiles, and submarines. He had worked at the Colt firearms factory in Hartford, Connecticut, maintained his own sales office in Paris, and spent three years in Russia, where he obtained orders from the czar for building ten submarines.

  Where Wilbur was lean and rumpled, Berg was stout and immaculate in attire. Berg was fluent in several languages and well connected, with contacts in high places throughout Europe. And though arms dealers—“merchants of death”—were an anathema to many, he seems to have been well liked and respected by nearly everyone. Berg and his wife, Edith, also an American, had lived in Paris for years, and the French held him in high regard. In 1901, he had been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

  From London down to Dover, then across the Channel, Wilbur and Berg were joined by another Flint executive, Frank Cordley. They arrived in Paris on the evening of May 27, when it was still daylight, and checked in to the luxurious Hôtel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli.

  “The Tuileries Palace and the Louvre are only a couple of squares to our left,” Wilbur reported that same night to Katharine and the family.

  The column Vendome is behind us, and the Place de la Concorde and Arc [de] Triomphe are farther up the Champs-Elysées. We are right in the most beautiful and interesting part of the city.

  He was also residing in one of the finest hotels in all Paris, indeed, in all Europe. The “New Hotel Meurice,” as said, had only just reopened after major “refurbishments.” The old “Hotel of Kings” had been made more sumptuous than ever. Its restaurant, in decor and cuisine, was now one of the finest in the city and a “rendezvous of fashion.” One could take a magnificent new elevator to a roof garden, and for panoramic views of Paris there were few to compare, or, for that matter, from those guest rooms fronting on the rue de Rivoli, one of which, room 329, Hart Berg had reserved for Wilbur.

  “Stay in Paris and taste the pervasive charm, the freshness of beautiful summer nights. The sky dusted with stars is radiant,” read an advertisement for the Meurice.

  The electricity shines through little lampshades, the flowers give out a fragrance. We are only a few steps from the Concorde, but one would think himself so far away, transported into a town of dreams.

  Wilbur wrote nothing of the roof terrace or the magnificent crystal
chandeliers in the main dining room, or the fancy livery worn by the elevator operator. Interestingly, in all he would write about his time in Paris, he never mentioned his plush accommodations. Probably he had no wish to incite envy at home. Or to magnify concern over his being corrupted by high living. Except for the hotel stationery on which his letters were written, one would never have known where he was staying.

  Nor did he make mention of the women of Paris, or the fashions on parade, or the shops, the opera, the theater, or the French in general, or the American tourists, of whom there were a great many.

  What he did write about in the days that followed, apart from all he reported on his dealings with Berg, Cordley, and the French, were the great buildings and art treasures of Paris, revealing as he never had—or had call to—the extent of his interest in architecture and painting.

  Like so many seeing Paris for the first time, he could not get enough of it, and covered more ground on foot than ever before. The five to ten miles a day he walked on board ship would seem to have been only a warm-up. Whatever free time he had away from business, he was out and on his own way. It was spring in Paris, the chestnut trees in bloom.

  From the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe was nearly two miles of gardens and esplanades with thousands of statues, he wrote. He climbed the three hundred steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, walked the banks of the Seine to the Île de la Cité, walked to the Opéra, walked down the rue de Rivoli two miles to the Place de la Bastille. On a Sunday morning he hiked to the top of Montmartre, a distance of nearly two miles that included more than three hundred steps.

  He loved seeing so much open space used to set off important buildings. “Paris is the most prodigal of land for public purposes,” he wrote in a long, descriptive letter to Bishop Wright. There was much to be learned from the French about how to place public buildings.