People sent in all sorts of inventions requesting patents. It was as if the twentieth century had ushered in just about every kook who thought he could build the next car, washing machine, light, can opener, phone, fan, and of course the mother of them all: a flying machine. The examiner sat at his large wooden desk and opened the bulky envelope. It was another flying-machine application. For fifty years, the patent office had been bombarded with applications for flying contraptions. The examiner had personally seen applications for machines that blasted off, bounced off, went off ships or cliffs, and jumped around like a man on a pogo stick. There were machines that looked like cars with wings; machines that looked like boats with wings; men with wings; and machines that looked like butterflies, birds, bats, and praying mantises. He rejected them all.

The clock in the patent hall ticked loudly. As he pulled out the papers, the examiner listened to someone walk across the solid wood floor. There was some sort of design showing a double-decker wing with numbers and arrows and wires. He saw no engine. Just this elfin creation that, according to the applicant, could fly. The examiner frowned. He had seen this before.

He had returned it with a note instructing Mr. Wright that there had been six other patentees who had preceded his design. He told Mr. Wright that his design was “vague and indefinite.”1 This was standard language for 90 percent of the patent applicants he received. It would seem all of America was peopled with mad inventors seeking patents for their whimsical ideas hatched over their eggs and coffee and finished over their cigars and beers. This was another such whimsical design, and now Mr. Wright had sent back another application with more notes, more explanations, more diagrams, and a cardboard inner-tube box.

The examiner leaned back in his wooden rollaway chair and held up the tube. He showed it to the examiner next to him, who shook his head. He looked through the tube. “So, this is your airplane Mr. Wright,” he murmured. He dropped the tube on his varnished desk and picked up the papers wearily. Mr. Wilbur Wright ran on and on about his “wing-warping system”2 and explained that he would be glad to clarify how the cardboard inner tube demonstrated the concept. The examiner dropped the papers and shut his eyes.

Clearly this man was deranged. He had told Mr. Wright in so many words that nuisance applications would be dismissed unless the patent application could show that the machine described had actually flown. He had further told Mr. Wright that “the claims are furthermore all rejected as based upon a device that is inoperative or incapable of performing the intended function. The examiner is unable to understand how the machine is supposed to operate.”³ And so now Mr. Wright had persisted with a paper tube and expected him to grant a patent. What Mr. Wright did not know was that he had just received six other patent applications that looked much more promising than his.

Men like Samuel Pierpont Langley had been granted patents for machines that actually flew, even if they were models. Of course, he was the secretary of the Smithsonian and a man of science, and one knew he was not one of the many cranks who bombed their offices every day with harebrained ideas that would never see the light of day.

The examiner breathed heavily and picked up the cardboard inner tube. He flexed it as Mr. Wright had instructed him to do. Nothing happened. He rolled it across his desktop. Nothing happened. He even dropped it from his desk. Nothing happened. He scooped up the tube and put it on the corner of his desk on end. He picked up his pen. He began by thanking Mr. Wright for his application, again, but that the cardboard box would be of no assistance and that he once again would have to reject his patent application until he could demonstrate that his machine could actually fly.

The examiner paused and looked at the diagrams and the machine and then the tube. He looked at the letter that claimed great gliding success in some place called Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Kitty Hawk? The examiner then wrote that if Mr. Wright wanted to carry this further, he would suggest a patent attorney be employed.

The examiner paused again and looked at the paper tube and the drawing of wires and arrows and numbers. He picked up the sketch of the flying machine and shook his head. He put his salutation on the paper and then suggested that Wilbur procure competent counsel.4 The paper tube was enclosed herewith.