The Airplane - Jay Spenser [62]
The French had heard disquieting rumors for years about the Wright brothers. Apprehension had mounted that these Americans, or perhaps Professor Langley, might have assumed the lead in flight. Consequently, Wilbur’s doings were followed with great interest.
Word of the Wrights first emerged in 1902 when Captain Ferdinand Ferber, a French artillery officer who corresponded with Octave Chanute, received from him an illustrated reprint of a presentation that Wilbur had made to the Society of Western Engineers in Chicago in September 1901. The reprint’s photos of the Wright 1901 Glider so inspired Ferber that he paid a carpenter to make a copy that, being highly inaccurate, failed to perform.
In April 1903, a major speech by Octave Chanute at France’s Aéro-Club de Paris escalated the Europeans’ worry to outright alarm. Highlighting the 1902 Glider with compelling photographs, Chanute revealed considerably more about it than the Wrights might have wished. His follow-up article in that November’s Revue Générale des Sciences put into print astonishing photographs of Wilbur Wright piloting a much larger glider than anyone else had ever flown. One shot even caught him in the act of performing a banked turn.
The French cherished their proprietary claim on human flight. Having given the world the balloon, they felt it was a matter of utmost national pride that they also deliver the airplane. Thus, consternation reigned when conflicting and unverifiable reports arrived that the Wrights had successfully flown a true airplane at the end of 1903. Many U.S. press accounts echoed the spurious claim that the Wrights had flown 3 miles (5 kilometers), a patently ridiculous assertion that caused French experts to dismiss the entire report as unfounded.
Intent on finding out just how much of a lead the Americans had, wealthy Parisian lawyer Ernest Archdeacon commissioned brothers Gabriel and Charles Voisin to build a reproduction of the Wright 1902 Glider. Although proclaimed an exact copy, Archdeacon’s Wright-inspired glider, like Ferber’s, was far from accurate and scarcely flew. Another French experimenter constructed a glider that came closer to approximating Wright technology, but it too was a failure. Yet a third crashed instantly when towed behind a car. All of this was tremendously reassuring to the French flying community, who took it as proof that the Wright claims were exaggerated.
After their success of December 17, 1903, the Wrights had flown two more seasons in the Dayton area to perfect their technology. They then called a halt to flying and devoted the next two and a half years to building improved engines and seven new airplanes. They also sought to secure customers for their invention. As a result, international press accounts had been reassuringly quiet of late about the Wrights.
In the meantime, imperfect flying machines had begun staggering into the air under power in France, which boasted the largest and most active aviation scene in the world. Alberto Santos-Dumont in his 14-bis performed Europe’s first officially hailed “flight” in October 1906, although it was actually just a wallowing, marginally controlled hop. In November 1907, a Voisin biplane modified by pioneer aviator Henri Farman set a European record by remaining aloft for more than one minute. Two months later, Farman performed the continent’s first circling flight in this same machine.
By the time Wilbur arrived at Le Mans, therefore, the French believed they led the world and largely dismissed the Wright brothers as bluffeurs. Wilbur’s presence thus became an intriguing puzzle that only deepened as time passed. The unprepossessing American was forthright, modest, unfailingly polite, and radiated quiet confidence. Unfortunately, however, he was also aloof and not much for talking.
Word arrived in July that Glenn Curtiss, a fellow américain, had won the Scientific American Trophy for the first public display in the United States of an airplane to fly more than a kilometer. The news