Clash of the Titans - In the Skies
How the airplane age was born and the conflicts that brought them to this world
As a part of the ‘Origins’ section of this blog, I will be writing a series called Clash of the Titans. Bold creations took big personalities and throughout history, you find the same idea germinating in many places. This has led to great rivalries that defined the ages.
I start this series with the rivalry between the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss.
In the Skies
America was a strange place in the 1800s. It was far from the advanced economy that we know today. That shift came about after the Second World War.
Wright Brothers
America was a place where the first generation of white Europeans born on the continent were making the continent theirs. Milton and Susan were two such first-generation Americans who were born just a few decades after the American independence.
Christians in the day were expected to marry young and have many children. It was normal for a household to have 5 to 15 children and for many of them to leave home once they attained maturity.
It was also normal for children, not to complete their education and just enter a trade. Often they would join a tradesman as an apprentice, and learn the skills while working for a very low salary for a period that was pre-fixed. They would thereafter leave to set up their shops.
Milton and Susan would also give birth to seven children but two would make their names famous.
Wilbur and Orville were born 4 years apart. Wilbur was the older of the two. He was unable to complete his education because his family was busy shifting from Indiana to Ohio. Orville dropped out of school in his junior year to set up a print shop. Wilbur joined him in his business. They soon started publishing a daily newspaper called The Evening Item.
The Evening Item was a short newspaper that covered news from across the world and highlighted national news while still focussing on local issues. Back then, almost every newspaper in America used to be based around local issues and local news. As a federation, the states and cities had jurisdiction over a lot of their laws and policies and these newspapers allowed people to be informed of what was happening. This shaped the politics of those states and cities heavily.
The Evening Item failed in just four months. Unable to generate enough revenue, they decided to downgrade to a weekly newspaper. Even that could not succeed.
In the 1880's there was another invention that was changing the way people travelled. It was called the Safety Bicycle. Till then, if you were to come across a bicycle, you would have been looking at a cycle with one large wheel and one small one meant to direct it. It was called the Penny Farthing Cycle. It had a pedal on the large back wheel on which the cyclist would sit and pedal. This meant that it took a lot more effort both to pedal and to balance. Also, the cycle was constructed such that it was hard to embark and disembark from it. It would be hard to stop at crossings for example.
The Safety Bicycle used a chain drive transmission. This is what you continue to see even today when you think of a bicycle. The 1890s was a period in US history that came to be known as the Bicycle Craze or Bike Boom. In December 1982, Wilbur and Orville Wright decided to take advantage of the situation and start a repair and sale shop of their own. While initially called the Wright Cycle Exchange, they renamed it the Wright Cycle Company.
In 1896, although there was a recession sweeping through America, cycles were one thing that seemed to be recession-proof and the sales of the cycles kept going up. It was at this time that the brother decided to launch their brand of cycle.
They sold two models of bikes but retained their sense of invention. They came up with two innovations in bicycles. The oil retaining wheel hubs as well as coaster brakes, that stop a moving bicycle when you pedal in the opposite direction.
When you think about the Wright brothers, the first thing that comes to mind is aeroplanes. But they were not the first to fly. Since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, people have tried and failed and even partially succeeded at flight.
In 1896, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer, physicist and innovator flew for the first time in America. He flew an unmanned craft which had a steam-powered engine and fixed-wing design. He launched the plane using a catapult from a boat on the Potomac River and it flew about 3300 feet or a Kilometer. This was 10 times the distance any previous attempt had flown.
The same year, Octave Chanute, a French aviation pioneer flew gliders on the shores of Lake Michigan.
The big problem with all of the designs up until that time was the wings were fixed and this caused the aircraft themselves to buckle once they took off. This solution to this problem would go on to form the foundation of the patent filed by the Wright Brothers.
If you have ever seen a plane make a turn you would have noticed, that when one side dips the other side lifts.
Wilbur Wright came up with the solution to this problem with airframes that would bend or warp with flight. This concept came to be known as wing warping and solved the problem of breaking airframes.
To put this to the test they needed a place where even if they crashed, the injuries would be minimal. The beach at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina presented a perfect location. The soft sand would absorb the impact well. Wilbur flew the first experimental flight and promptly crashed the plane. The sand did its job and he came away with few injuries.
The next flight was undertaken a week before Christmas on 17th Dec 1903. This flight was flown by Oliver and it took off and landed perfectly. He flew for a total of 59 seconds. It was the first powered flight undertaken by man. This set off a frenzy amongst aviation enthusiasts to find their solutions.
One of those was a man called Glenn Curtiss.
Glenn Curtiss
Glenn was born in 1878 in Hammondsport, New York. His parents had moved to the town just two years before his birth. Due to his interest in inventions, he did not complete his education and instead went off to intern at Eastman Dry Plates and Film Company which would eventually become Eastman Kodak.
After his internship, he started working as a Western Union bicycle messenger where his love of bicycles and eventually motorbikes would begin. He used to race cycles often and was quite innovative when fixing his cycle. He started his own company making motorbikes in 1902. His need for speed helped him focus on developing better and better engines. He set the unofficial speed record of 219.45 Km/hr on his bike in 1907.
After hearing of the first flight by the Wright brothers he made an offer to them to power their planes with his engines. Wilbur Wright did not wish to work with Glenn Curtiss and declined. This prompted Glenn to embark on a plane project.
Glenn sought to develop a mechanism to fly a plane that was different from that of the Wrights. He came up with the innovative concept of an Aileron which is a movable part of the wing which allows for air to be redirected. A French word meaning “little wings”; almost all modern planes are still designed with this feature.
The Rivalry
The Wright Brothers saw opportunities emerging with the Army which was seeking to use planes in war. They engaged in several demonstrations for the Army.
Unfortunately for them, the final test where Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was to fly on the plane ended in disaster. One of the propellors broke and the plane crashed. Lieutenant Selfridge died and Orville Wright who was flying the plane also sustained several fractures which would remain a constant source of discomfort for the rest of his life.
Glenn Curtiss in the meantime supported by the Smithsonian was developing his planes to showcase to the Army.
The Wright Brothers had a patent on a concept and not a feature, which was possible in the 1900s. They moved the courts and sued Glenn Curtiss. Backed by benefactors such as the Smithsonian, Glenn was able to prolong the court battle.
Wilbur Wright took this rather personally and as the case dragged on, they found their wealth diminishing and a sense of injustice plagued his heart. He had to travel extensively, consult lawyers on the case and offer testimony in court repeatedly. Completely consumed by the case Wilbur contracted Typhoid and died at the age of 45 in 1912.
Less than a decade after the first flight, he was dead.
Two years later in January 1914, the court ruled in favour of the Wright Brothers and awarded them 20% in royalty on any aircraft sold in the US.
Unfortunately for Orville, it was a pyrrhic victory. He had lost his brother who was the visionary and the source of all innovations. Also, within months of the verdict, in June 1914, the First World War began.
With such a considerable royalty to be paid, all other aircraft companies struggled to compete in the market. The US government needed as many planes as it could find and the patent was proving to be an impediment.
The US government intervened. It brought Orville Wright to the table along with all of the other aircraft manufacturers including Glenn Curtiss to agree to a much lower royalty arrangement for national service.
The Wrights’ company was not thriving but held some of the most crucial patents for the manufacture of planes.
More than a decade later neither Orville nor Glenn owned any interest in the companies that they had founded respectively.
Eventually, in 1929, with the depression looming, the Wrights’ and Curtiss’ company would merge with neither of them in control to form the Curtiss-Wright Company which exists even today and manufactures some of the most high-tech parts utilised in the manufacture of planes.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Chanute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Glider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_bicycle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Cycle_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/evening_item/17/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
https://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/tale/Tale_of_Airplane/Dark_End.html
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/wright-brothers