Wilbur was flying again. He was out over the dunes of Kitty Hawk and looking down at the two sheds he and Orville had built. He could smell the ocean, and felt the rising heat. Now he was riding the thermals, rising up like the hawks he had observed. He turned off the engine and could see the ocean and the Albemarle Sound he had crossed with Israel Perry in 1900 and nearly drowned. He was banking now and soaring with the gulls and the eagles in an updraft. He was happy again. He was back at Kitty Hawk, and when he landed he would have some biscuits and coffee and discuss the flight with Orville and make adjustments. Maybe they would sleep in the tent for old time's sake. But now, now he was going higher than he had ever been before, in fact, he was leaving the earth. He felt like he could fly forever.
The premature death of Wilbur Wright would have far-reaching implications. He had been steadily getting run down by the incessant legal demands. As Tom Crouch wrote in The Bishop's Boys, “He was constantly on the move from mid-December 1911 through the early spring of 1912, shuttling back and forth between New York and Dayton in an attempt to deal with the Grahame-White, Lamson, Winkley and Herring-Curtiss suits.”1 Orville would later recall that his brother “would come white” after court appearances and long hours with his lawyers. It was his quest, his plane, and Wilbur would do whatever it took to protect what he had discovered in the sands of Kitty Hawk.
It was May 4, 1912, when Wilbur had shellfish in a hotel in Boston and didn't feel well. He had written an angry letter to his attorney regarding the Curtiss patent suit. It had dragged on way too long and had been all-consuming for the last few years. And now his attorney wanted to wait unit the fall to begin hearings. Wilbur wrote, “Unnecessary delays have already destroyed fully three-fourths of the value of our patent. The opportunities of the last few years will never return again.”2 It was his last letter, and it is fitting that it was about the case that would not be resolved in his lifetime. He had written to a French friend, M. Hievesy, earlier in the year and revealed his understanding of the time wasted by the litigation: “We wished to be free from business cares so that we could give all our time to advancing the science and art of aviation, but we have been compelled to spend our time on business matters instead during the last five years.”3
Four days after he returned from Boston, he was noticeably weaker. Dr. Conklin examined him and wrote, “there seems to be some sort of typhoidal fever prevailing.”4 Typhoid fever had nearly killed Orville twenty years before, and now it was coming for Wilbur. The doctors thought it might be malaria and did not see Wilbur in any immediate danger. Wilbur, as always, knew better and dictated his last will and testament. Orville caught a train back from Washington to be by his side on May 20, when he took a turn for the worse. His father, now eighty-four years old, began recording his forty-five-year-old son's condition in his diary.
On May 15, Bishop Wright wrote, “Wilbur has not a high fever as some days, Roosevelt spoke in Dayton tonight, and Orville went to hear him, but was crowded and heard a suffragette instead….” Then he wrote on May 16, “Fever is unchanged. Orville left for Washington City.” May 18: “Wilbur is no better, he has an attack mentally for the worse. He is put under opiates. He is unconscious mostly.” May 19: “Wilbur asks to take opiates, but is mostly quiet and unconscious.” May 20: “Dr. Spitler came afternoon and at night with Dr. B. Conklin. Wilbur's case very serious, he notices little.” May 23: “The Journal represents Wilbur as changed for the worse…he seems about the same.”
May 24: “Wilbur seems better in every respect…the doctors have a long examination before noon.” May 26: “Wilbur was worse in the night, Orville slept little.” May 27: “His fever was higher and he has difficulty with the bladder and his digestion inadequate…. I slept with my clothes on. We thought him near death. He lived through till morning.” May 28: “Wilbur is sinking the doctors have no hope of his recovery.”
Then, finally, May 29: “Wilbur seemed no worse, though he had a bad chill. The fever was down but rose high. He remained the same till 3:15 in the morning when, eating his allowance 15 minutes before his death, he expired without a struggle. His life was one of toil.”
Wilbur died on May 30 at 3:15 in the morning. He would not escape the clutches of typhoid fever the way his brother had. It might have been the fact that he was older or tired, or it might have just been fate. Milton wrote in his diary, “A short life, full of consequence. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance, and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadily, he lived and died.”5
A thousand telegrams poured in. Newspapers cleared their front pages with bold headlines, “INVENTOR OF THE AIRPLANE, FATHER OF FLIGHT, DEATH OF CONQUEROR OF THE AIR, THE MAN WHO MADE FLYING POSSIBLE.”6 Many of the papers declared boldly that Wilbur Wright was the true inventor of the airplane. A funeral was to be held at First Presbyterian Church. The family considered a private funeral, but the world demanded a public mourning. Twenty-five thousand people filed past his coffin. At 3:30 p.m., on June 1st, Wilbur Wright was lowered into his grave as all activity in the city ground to a halt: the switchboards shut down, the trolleys didn't move, and automobiles pulled to the curb. The inventor of human flight was being laid to rest.
Orville and Katherine pulled together; they were even more determined to fight on for their brother. They were bitter in their grief and, in a very Miltonian way, they held the world responsible for Wilbur's death, but one man in particular. Tom Crouch surmised in The Bishop's Boys, “They did not regard Wilbur's death as pure providence—other factors had been at work. He had been worn out by the patent fight, his energy drained and his resistance lowered. The men who had forced them into court time after time bore a share of the responsibility.”7
To Orville Wright, Glenn Curtiss was responsible for the death of his brother. Curtiss had hoped that with the death of Wilbur Wright, things might get better; but by January 31, 1914, things got much worse. Curtiss could now hear the faucet on the factory floor. It dripped in the rhythm of the clock that ticked in his office.8 He sat with the green shade of the desk lamp cutting just under his eyes. The cuffs of his shirt had grease painted around the edges, and his vest had dark oil stains that shone in the sunlight. He couldn't resist working on an airplane even if he was in a suit. But all that was over now.
He had just hung up with his lawyer, and the US Circuit Court of Appeals had just handed the Wrights their final victory and awarded them a pioneer patent.9 The Hammondsport factory he had built with his own hands was dormant. His company was in bankruptcy, and now the Wrights had a pioneer patent10 that said everyone had to pay them to use technology associated with flying.
Orville was ecstatic over the New York Court of Appeals’ decision and wrote later: “Claim 3 which was for warping wings or ailerons without a rudder was sustained as I hoped. This will give us an absolute monopoly as there are no machines at the present time that do not infringe this claim…. Of course we will make a claim for damages done by Curtiss…. This covers every machine that is being flown today…all of them have ailerons.”11
It was the motherlode for Orville. A pioneer's patent could not be contested, and it said that all technology associated with the patent had to be derivative of the original invention. The courts had ruled that not only were the Curtiss systems of control derivative of the Wrights’ but that all aerial-control systems associated with flying came from the Wright system. Basically, if you wanted to fly, you had to get a license through Orville Wright and pay up.
Back in November 1910, Glenn had tried to work it out with Wilbur. Everyone knew he was the decision maker and the power broker. They had met before a race in Belmont, and Curtiss had asked for terms. Wilbur came back with a fee of $1,000 for every plane sold and $100 for each day Curtiss few in an exhibition. It was outrageous, and Curtiss wrote Wilbur again asking for terms. The same terms came back, and Curtiss responded, “It had been my intention to make you a counter offer but in thinking the matter over, it has occurred to me to accept a license, even at no cost to us, might not improve our condition.”12 Wilbur had written back on November 30, obviously irritated: “The negotiation was initiated at your request and now seems similarly closed by you…. It is well for both parties to refer to the established mode of settlement.”13 In other words, let the suit go through the courts.
Curtiss was broke in 1910, and then his company had been served again by Orville Wright with a secondary suit when he tried to get around the patent by making the ailerons a separate control. Orville's suit would win with the precedent of the pioneer patent that essentially grounded him, along with all other pilots who did not pay the Wrights a licensing fee. Curtiss had to somehow break the essence of the Wright pioneer patent, or he was doomed. He had to prove that someone else had invented the control system of the modern airplane first.
Curtiss put his feet up on the desk and stared at the photos of his various planes on the wall. If he could show that someone had flown before the Wrights—really, anyone would do—then the patent would not be valid. To hold a pioneer patent, you had to be first. His eyes settled on a picture of Samuel Pierpont Langley's plane. In the photo, the plane was on the houseboat just before it went into the Potomac. The damn thing looked like a giant bug on top of a boat. But he had flown a model aerodrome before. Curtiss stared at the picture for a long moment. The basics might have been fine, and Curtiss wondered if it had been in the execution or the launching mechanism, as Langley claimed.
Langley had died in 1906, and Charles D. Walcott had taken over as secretary of the Smithsonian. Langley had given them all a black eye when his plane nosed into the Potomac, and Curtiss knew the Smithsonian wanted to redeem its fallen hero of aviation. Walcott had gotten the army to invest $50,000, and he had heard only blame and recrimination since they fished Langley's plane out of the water. No funding was coming the way of the Smithsonian anytime soon. But if he could show that Langley's plane could have flown, then that would circumvent the Wright patent. If he could just get his hands on Langley's flyer. He knew Walcott either still had it or knew where it was. But he couldn't be obvious. He needed a third party to approach the Smithsonian.
Curtis picked up the phone and gave the operator a number. He picked up a pencil and flipped it into the garbage can across his office. This was why he was a good pilot—he had very good reflexes.