Dayton Aviation What Dreams We Have The Wright Brothers and Their Hometown of Dayton, Ohio

BY C.G. ABBOT,
SECRETARY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

NOTE-This paper has been submitted to Dr. Orville Wright, and under date of October 8, 1942, he states that the paper as now prepared will be acceptable to him if given adequate publication.

It is everywhere acknowledged that the Wright brothers were the first to make sustained flights in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.

Mainly because of acts and statements of former officers of the Smithsonian Institution, arising from tests made with the reconditioned Langley plane of 1903 at Hammondsport, New York, in 1914, Dr. Orville Wright feels that the Institution adopted an unfair and injurious attitude. He therefore sent the original Wright Kitty Hawk plane to England in 1928. The nature of the acts and statements referred to are as follows:

In March 1914, Secretary Walcott contracted with Glenn H. Curtiss to attempt a flight with the Langley machine. This action seems ill considered and open to criticism. For in January 1914, the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, had handed down a decision recognizing the Wrights as "pioneers in the practical art of flying with heavier-than-air machines" and pronouncing Glenn H. Curtiss an infringer of their patent. Hence, in view of probable further litigation, the Wrights stood to lose in fame and revenue and Curtiss stood to gain pecuniarily, should the experiments at Hammondsport indicate that Langley's plane was capable of sustained flight in 1903, previous to the successful flights made December 17, 1903, by the Wrights at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

The machine was shipped to Curtiss at Hammondsport, N.Y., in April. Dr. Zahm, the Recorder of the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory and expert witness for Curtiss in the patent litigation, was at Hammondsport as official representative of the Smithsonian Institution during the time the machine was being reconstructed and tested. In the reconstruction the machine was changed from what it was in 1903 in a number of particulars as given in Dr. Wright's list of differences which appears later in this paper. On the 28th of May and the 2d of June, 1914, attempts to fly were made. After acquiring speed by running on hydroplane floats on the surface of Lake Keuka the machine lifted into the air several different times. The longest time off the water with the Langley motor was approximately five seconds. Dr. Zahm stated that "it was apparent that owing to the great weight which had been given to the structure by adding the floats it was necessary to increase the propeller thrust." So no further attempts were made to fly with the Langley 52 HP engine.

It is to be regretted that the Institution published statements repeatedly² to the effect that these experiments of 1914 demonstrated that Langley's plane of 1903 without essential modification was the first heavier-than-air machine capable of maintaining sustained human flight.

As first exhibited in the United States National Museum, January 15, 1918, the restored Langley plane of 1903 bore the following label:

THE ORIGINAL, FULL-SIZE
LANGLEY FLYING MACHINE, 1903

For this simple label others were later substituted containing the claim that Langley's machine "was the first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight."

Though the matter of the label is not now an issue, it seems only fair to the Institution to say that in September 1928, Secretary Abbot finally caused the label of the Langley machine to be changed to read simply as follows:

LANGLEY AERODROME
THE ORIGINAL SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY
FLYING MACHINE OF 1903, RESTORED.
Deposited by
the Smithsonian Institution
301,613

This change has frequently been overlooked by writers on the controversy.

In January 1942, Mr. Fred C. Kelly, of Peninsula, Ohio, communicated to me a list of differences between the Langley plane as tested in 1914 and as tested in 1903, which he had received from Dr. Wright. This list is given verbatim below. The institution accepts Dr. Wright's statement as correct in point of facts. Inferences from the comparisons are primarily the province of interested experts and are not discussed here.

COMPARISON OF THE LANGLEY MACHINE OF 1903 WITH THE HAMMONDSPORT MACHINE OF MAY-JUNE, 1914

Since I became Secretary, in 1928, I have made many efforts to compose the Smithsonian-Wright controversy, which I inherited. I will now, speaking for the Smithsonian Institution, make the following statement in an attempt to correct as far as now possible acts and assertions of former Smithsonian officials that may have been misleading or are held to be detrimental to the Wrights.

1. I sincerely regret that the Institution employed to make the tests of 1914 an agent who had been an unsuccessful defendant in patent litigation brought against him by the Wrights.

2. I sincerely regret that statements were repeatedly made by officers of the Institution that the Langley machine was flown in 1914 "with certain changes of the machine necessary to use pontoons," without mentioning the other changes included on Dr. Wright's list.

3. I point out that Assistant Secretary Rathbun was misinformed when he stated that the Langley machine "without modification" made "successful flights."

4. I sincerely regret the public statement by officers of the Institution that "The tests (of 1914) showed that the late Secretary Langley had succeeded in building the first aeroplane capable of sustained free flight with a man."

5. Leaving to experts to formulate the conclusions arising from the 1914 tests as a whole, in view of all the facts, I repeat in substance, but with amendments, what I have already published in Smithsonian Scientific Series, Vol 12-1932, page 227: The flights of the Langley aerodrome at Hammondsport in 1914, having been made long after flying had become a common art, and with changes of the machine indicated by Dr. Wright's comparison, as given above, did not warrant the statements published by the Smithsonian Institution that these tests proved that the large Langley machine of 1903 was capable of sustained flight carrying a man.

6. If the publication of this paper should clear the way for Dr. Wright to bring back to America the Kitty Hawk machine to which all the world awards first place, it will be a source of profound and enduring gratification to his countrymen everywhere. Should he decide to deposit the plane in the United States National Museum, it would be given the highest place of honor, which is its due.

Publication of this statement in the Smithsonian Annual Report marked the end of the long controversy.

Orville Wright died January 30, 1948. He had notified the Science Museum at South Kensington, England, that he wished to have the original 1903 plane returned to the United States. Toward the end of 1948 it was brought back and deposited by the Wright executors in the National Museum, administered by the Smithsonian Institution. It was formally dedicated on December 17, the forty-fifth anniversary of the first flight.

¹For an account of early Langley and Wright aeronautical investigations, see Smithsonian Report for 1900 and The Century Magazine of September 1908.

²Smithsonian Reports: 1914, pp. 9, 219, 221, 222; 1915, pp. 14, 121; 1917, p. 4; 1918, pp. 3, 28, 114, 166. Report of U.S. National Museum, 1914, pp. 46 and 47.