The Bishop's Boys (89 page)

10. R. M. Ruck to Brig. Gen. Wolfe Murray, January 18, 1906, in ibid., p. 46.

11. F. Ferber to Wilbur Wright, October 21, 1905, in
Papers
, vol. 1, p. 524.

12. Wilbur Wright to F. Ferber, November 4, 1905,. in ibid.

13. Carl Dienstbach, “Dus Zwiete Lebansjahr der Praktische Flugmaschine,”
Illustriete Aeronautische Mitteilungen
(February 1906), 50–54.

14. “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances,”
Scientific American
(Jan. 13, 1906), 40.

15. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, December 4, 1905, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 529.

16. Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith,
The Rebirth of European Aviation, 1902–1908
(London: HMSO, 1974), p. 192.

17. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, April 28, 1906, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 175.

18. Wilbur Wright to Lt. Col. A.E.W. Gleichen, July 31, 1906, in Walker,
Early Aviation
, p. 55.

19. J. E. Capper to Director, Fortifications and Works, September 6, 1906, in ibid., p. 59.

20. For full details of the work of J. W. Dunne, see Walker,
Early Aviation
, pp. 163–263.

21. “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Performances,”
Scientific American
(April 7, 1906), 291–292.

22. On the personality and appearance of G. H. Curtiss, see C. R. Roseberry,
Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972).

23. Roseberry,
Curtiss
, pp. 49–53; Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 435.

24. “Fliers or Liars,”
New York Herald
(Paris Edition), February 10, 1906.

1. Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, October 15, 1906, in Marvin W. McFarland, ed.,
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953, cited hereafter as
Papers
), vol. 2, pp. 730–731.

2. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, October 10, 1906, in ibid., p. 729.

3. Ibid., p. 730.

4. Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, October 15, 1906, in ibid., pp. 730–731.

5. Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, November 1, 1906, in ibid., p. 733.

6. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, November 2, 1906, in ibid., p. 734.

7. “L’Aéroplane Archdeacon et les expériences de Merlimont,”
L’Aérophile
(June 1905). Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith,
The Rebirth of European Aviation, 1902–1908: A Study of the Wright Brothers’ Influence
(London: HMSO, 1974), has served as a general guide to early European aeronautics.

8. Robert Esnault-Pelterie, “Expériences d’Aviation exécutées en 1904, en verification de celles des fréres Wright,”
L’Aérophile
(June 1905).

9. Ibid.

10. “L’Aéroplane Archdeacon …”
L’Aérophile
(June 1905).

11. Gabriel Voisin,
Men, Women and 10,000 Kites
(London: Putnam, 1963).

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Biographical material on Bleriot and information on his early aircraft can be found in Simone Rubel Blériot, “Souvenirs d’Enfance,”
Icare
(1979), 97; Michael L’Hospice,
Match Pour La Manche
(Paris, 1964); Charles Fontaine,
Comment Blériot a Traverse La Manche
(Paris, 1909). Tom D. Crouch,
Blériot XI: The Story of a Classic Aircraft
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), is virtually the only full treatment of the subject in English.

17.
New York Herald
(Paris Edition), November 13, 1906 (?). Undated copy of article found in Bell Scrapbooks, Archives, National Air and Space Museum.

18. Ernest Archdeacon, in Gibbs-Smith,
Rebirth
, p. 223.

19. Undated and unidentified article in Bell Scrapbooks, NASM.

20.
New York Herald
(?), undated article, 1906, Bell Scrapbooks, NASM.

21. Ibid.

1. Milton Wright, Diary, November 30, 1906, box 10, file
2
, WSU.

2. Charles Ranlett Flint,
Memories of an Active Life: Men and Ships and Sealing Wax
(New York: Putnam, 1923).

3. Fred C. Kelly,
The Wright Brothers
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943), pp. 118–119.

4. “The Genesis of the First Successful Aeroplane,”
Scientific American
(Dec. 15, 1906), 402.

5. Kelly provides the best discussion of the evolving proposals moving back and forth between the Wrights and Flint representatives.

6. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, December 20, 1906, in Marvin W. McFarland, ed.,
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953, cited hereafter as
Papers
), vol. 2, p. 743.

7. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, January 28, 1907, in ibid., p. 749.

8. Kelly,
Wright Brothers
, pp. 97–98.

9. Dayton
Herald
, May 21, 1907; Orville Wright to H. C. Richardson, February 17, 1926, in
Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 1137–1138.

10. Wilbur Wright to Milton Wright, July 20, 1907, in ibid., 803–804.

11. Orville Wright to Board of Ordnanace and Fortification, May 17, 1907, in ibid., p. 761.

12. Orville Wright to Board of Ordnanace and Fortification, May 31, 1907, in ibid., p. 766.

13. H. O. Berg to Flint and Co., May 26, 1907, in Fred C. Kelly, ed.,
Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), p. 205.

14. Alfred Gollin,
No Longer an Island: Britain and the Wright Brothers, 1902–1909
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984), pp. 213–221.

15. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 11, 1907, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 773.

16. Ibid.

17. Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, June 8, 1907, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 212.

18. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, May 30, 1907; Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, July 24, 1907; and Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, June 18, 1907; all in ibid., pp. 209, 227, and 217.

19. Wilbur Wright, Diary, July 17, 1907, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 798. See also Wilbur Wright, “Flying as a Sport—Its Possibilities,”
Scientific American
(Feb. 29, 1908), p. 135.

20. Wilbur Wright, Diary, July 8, 1907, in ibid., p. 790.

21. F. Ferber to Georges Besançon,
L’Aérophile
(June 1907), 107–108.

22. Wilbur Wright, Diary, July 24, 1907, in
Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 807–808.

23. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, July 11, 1907, in ibid., p. 793.

24. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, July 1, 1907, in ibid., p. 783.

25. Wilbur Wright to Milton Wright, July 2, 1907, in ibid., pp. 803–804.

26. Ibid., p. 803.

27. Ibid.

28. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, September 2, 1907, in ibid., p. 819.

29. Wilbur Wright, Diary, August 17–September 11, 1907, in ibid., p. 839.

30. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, September 2, 1907, in ibid., p. 819.

31. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, December 9, 1907, in ibid., p. 839.

32. Ibid.

33. Stephen F. Tillman,
Man Unafraid: The Miracle of Military Aviation
(Washington D.C.: Army Times Publishing Co., 1958), pp. 14–15.

34. Ibid., p. 15.

35. All material on the Grand Prix is drawn from appropriate issues of
L’Aérophile;
C. H. Gibbs-Smith,
The Rebirth of European Aviation, 1902–1908
(London: HMSO, 1974); and C. H. Gibbs-Smith,
The Invention of the Aeroplane, 1799–1909
(London: Faber & Faber, 1965).

36. Orville Wright to Milton Wright, November 19, 1907, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, pp. 240–241.

37. Ibid.

38. Gibbs-Smith,
Rebirth
, p. 245.

1. Wilbur Wright to Milton Wright, November 22, 1907, in Fred C. Kelly, ed.,
Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), p. 241.

2. Stephen Tillman,
Man Unafraid: The Miracle of Military Aviation
(Washington, D.C.: Army Times Publishing Co., 1954), p. 15.

3. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, December 3, 1907, in Marvin W. McFarland, ed.,
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953 cited hereafter as
Papers
), vol. 2, pp. 835–836.

4. Tillman,
Man Unafraid
, pp. 13–17.

5. Ibid., p. 16.

6. Ibid., p. 17; and James Means to Octave Chanute, January 10, 1908, Octave Chanute Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

7. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, January 16, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 849.

8. Tillman,
Man Unafraid
, pp. 17–19.

9. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, April 8, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 861.

10. The discussion of Bell and the AEA is based on a variety of sources, including Louis Casey,
Curtiss: The Hammondsport Era, 1907–1917
(New York: Crown, 1981); J. W. Parkin,
Bell and Baldwin: Their Development of Aerodromes and Hydrodromes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia
(Toronto: University of Toronto, 1964); and C. H. Roseberry,
Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972).

11. Parkin,
Bell and Baldwin
, p. 215.

12. Ibid.

13. Thomas E. Selfridge to Orville Wright, January 15, 1908, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 248.

14. Casey,
Curtiss
, p. 15.

15. Ibid., pp. 6–34.

16. Unless otherwise noted, the treatment of the 1908 Kitty Hawk trials is based on Wilbur Wright, Diary T, in
Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 862–880.

17. See Fred Kelly, notes on the Wrights and the newsmen in 1903 and 1908. Final correspondence folder, Fred C. Kelly, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. See also Fred C. Kelly,
The Wright Brothers
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943).

18. Byron Newton, “Watching the Wright Brothers Fly,”
Aeronautics
(June 1908), 8; see also Arthur Ruhl, “History at Kill Devil Hill,”
Collier’s
(May 30, 1908), 18–19; Carl Dienstbach, “The Recent Flights of the Wright Brothers in North Carolina,”
American Aeronautics
(June 1908), 209–211; “American Aeronautics Disclosure of the Wright Brothers’ Secret,”
American Aeronautics
(June 1908), 6–10; and Mark Sullivan,
Our Times
(New York: Scribner’s, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 607–613.

19. Newton, “Watching the Wright Brothers Fly.”

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. See assorted news articles, Wright Scrapbooks, 1908, Wright Papers, LC.

23.
Papers
, May 15, 1908, vol. 2, p. 879.

24. Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, May 19, 1908, in ibid., p. 881.

1. Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, May 19, 1908, in Marvin W. McFarland, ed.,
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953, cited hereafter as
Papers
), vol. 2, p. 881.

2. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, May 29, 1908, in ibid., p. 888.

3. Ibid.

4. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, May 23, 1908, in ibid.

5. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 28, 1908, in ibid., p. 903.

6. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 3, 1908, in ibid., p. 886.

7. Orville Wright to Glenn Curtiss, July 20, 1908, in ibid., p. 907.

8. Wilbur Wright, Diary T, June 9, 1908, in ibid., p. 895.

9. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 3, 1908, in ibid., p. 886.

10. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 17, 1908, in ibid., p. 900.

11. Ibid.

12. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, June 20, 1908, in Fred C. Kelly, ed.,
Miracle at Kitty Hawk
(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Young, 1951), p. 275.

13. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, July 9, 1908, in ibid., p. 289.

14. Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, August 2, 1908, in ibid.

15. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, August 9, 1908, in ibid., p. 291.

16.
Daily Mirror
(London), August 13, 1908.

17.
The Times
(London), August 14, 1908.

18.
Le Figaro
, August 11, 1908.

19.
L’Aérophile
, August 11, 1908.

20.
L’Auto
, August 9, 1908.

21. C. H. Gibbs-Smith,
The Rebirth of European Aviation, 1902–1908
(London: HMSO, 1974), p. 287.

22.
Le Matin
, September 5, 1908.

23. Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright, August 15, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 913.

1. Orville Wright to Katharine Wright, August 31, 1908, in Fred C. Kelly, ed.,
Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951, cited hereafter as
Miracle)
, p. 301.

2. Wilbur Wright to Milton Wright, September 13, 1908, in ibid., p. 309.

3. Orville Wright to Katharine Wright, August 27, 1908, in
ibid
., p. 298.

4. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, August 23, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, P. 915.

5. Ibid.

6. Benjamin D. Foulois with Martin Caiden,
From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. 54.

7. Stephen Tillman,
Man Unafraid: The Miracle of Military Aviation
(Washington, D.C.: Army Times Publishing Co., 1958), pp. 26–27; Foulois,
From the Wright Brothers
, pp. 48–49.

8. Foulois,
From the Wright Brothers
, p. 54.

9. Ibid., p. 54.

10. Signal Corps, “Log of the Wright Airplane,” August 25, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 916.

11. Complete details of the flights at Fort Myer can be found in Arthur G. Renstrom,
Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Chronology
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1975), pp. 165–166.

12. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, September 6, 1908, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, P. 303.

13. Some details of the account of September 17 are based on articles of that date and the next in the
New York Times
and the Washington
Evening Star
.

14. Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright, November 14, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, pp. 936–937.

15. Octave Chanute to Katharine Wright, September 29, 1908, in ibid., p. 929.

16. Milton Wright, Diary, September 17, 1908, in ibid., p. 925.

17. John R. McMahon,
The Wright Brothers: Fathers of Flight
(New York: Little, Brown, 1930), p. 208.

18. François Peyrey,
Les Oiseaux Artificiels
(Paris: H. Dunod et E. Pinat, 1909), pp. 194–196; Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, September 20, 1908, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 315; Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, September 29, 1908, in
Papers
, vol. 2, p. 925.

19. Wilbur Wright to Katharine Wright, September 20, 1908, in Kelly, ed.,
Miracle
, p. 315.

20. Ibid.

21. Quoted in Foulois,
From the Wright Brothers
, p. 57.

22. Ibid.