Glenn Curtiss looked over the parts of the 1903 Langley flyer that had arrived that morning in wood crates stenciled SMITHSONIAN. It made Curtiss feel very important to be associated with the making of history. He had his workmen spread out the parts on the factory floor of the Herring-Curtiss factory. Zahm and Walcott had told Curtiss to restore the aerodrome to its 1903 condition. Curtiss could see right away that this wouldn't do if the plane was to fly. No, he would approach this plane the way he approached all planes—with one simple question: How could he make it better?

He pulled the musty parts and stared at the body of the plane. Time and the crash had done its work. Curtiss felt it should have stayed in the Potomac, but here it was. He instructed his men as he replaced the wings with new Curtiss wings that had the correct chord, camber, and aspect ratios that reflected the data Wilbur had found with his wind tunnel. He then linked the wings to the fuselage with wires trussed to different points. This was critical. Many had claimed that Langley's machine spiraled into the Potomac because not only did the wings not have enough lift, but they folded up when the catapult flung the flyer into the air. Curtiss gutted the old control system and put in a yoke-and-wheel control system based on his own planes that led directly back to the 1903 Wright Flyer, with the three-axes-of-control center. A large cruciform tail was added and altered to serve as rudder and elevator. Then Curtiss put the Langley flyer on floats, forever leaving the catapult system in the ash heap of aviation history.1

He and his men stepped back from the aerodrome and surveyed their work. It was maybe 30 percent 1903 technology and 70 percent 1914. It was time to see if it would fly. On May 28, 1914, Curtiss sat in the aerodrome on Lake Keuka, with the water slopping over the floats. It was early morning, which was better for avoiding the press. He pushed up the throttle all the way and felt the plane start skimming across the water. Curtiss eased back the elevator, and the Langley aerodrome left the earth for the first time under its own power and flew 150 feet. The plane splashed back down. Curtiss shook his head. It just didn't have the power. He tried a few more times, but each time the plane barely lifted off. He had the plane taken back to his plant, where he finished the job by replacing the 1903 engine with a modern Curtiss engine with twice the horsepower. He also made some changes to the structure of the plane to improve its aerodynamics. Only the fuselage was original when Curtiss finished. Curtiss went back to the lake for several more flights that were longer in duration. None of the flights were sustainable, but it was enough that the Langley flyer flew.

It was at this time that Orville Wright's older brother Lorin Wright stepped off the train in Hammondsport. Orville had asked him to help protect their invention, and Lorin was willing to do his part to protect his brother's honor and reputation. He was doing this for Orville, but he was doing it for Wilbur too. If Wilbur had been there, he would have taken care of Glenn Curtiss once and for all. But Wilbur was gone and so it was left to Lorin to protect the family name.2

It was a beautiful morning as he took a cab to the Curtiss hangars on Lake Keuka's shore. He felt like a secret agent. He was carrying a small camera and knew what had to be done. After an Englishman named Griffith Brewer met the brothers in 1908 and had flown with Wilbur at Le Mans, he had the distinction of being the first Englishman to fly. Brewer had spent three months with Orville in Dayton and had learned about the Smithsonian and Glenn Curtiss, they realized what had happened. Griffith had taken a tour of the Curtiss factory after Orville told him that the Smithsonian had snubbed the Wrights in 1910 by refusing the offer of their plane for exhibition and had given people the impression that they were heavily dependent on the research of Langley for their 1903 Wright Flyer.³

Then Orville told him the story of Curtiss and the Langley aerodrome and asked him if he would request a tour of the Hammondsport facility to see what he could find out. Griffith took the tour and found out that the 1903 aerodrome had been heavily altered so that it could fly. He took photographs and forwarded them to Orville. That's when Orville asked his brother Lorin to find evidence of the alterations to the Langley plane and the results of the trials.

The taxi let Lorin off on a rain-soaked tarmac. He looked around, then walked straight toward an open hangar and immediately saw the aerodrome. He took some pictures. In his writing about the events there is a natural drama to his narrative. “I arrived at Hammondsport about one o'clock Friday afternoon June 4th. Went immediately to Curtiss training camp on the lake shore near the village,” Lorin wrote in a memorandum.4 “I found three Curtiss boat machines containing the controls and one which had the wings removed. I also saw the so-called Langley machine which they were preparing to give a trial. Mechanic told me it would be tried Friday evening if the wind died down.”⁵

The next morning, June 5, he watched with binoculars from a field as the Langley aerodrome was tested on the lake: “The distance from the launching place I think was about 600 feet…. About ten o'clock Mr. Walter Johnson mounted the machine and started the motor. The machine gradually speed[ed up] and after running as near as I could judge 1000 ft the rear wings broke.”⁶ The wings had folded up during the trial as Curtiss pilot Walter Johnson attempted to take off. He had gone only 330 yards when the plane fell apart. Lorin went back to the hangar when Johnson came in with the soggy aerodrome. Orville's brother began to snap more pictures.

Johnson, still wet from the lake, demanded his film. Johnson was a small, pugnacious man who looked like he might take a swing. Lorin later wrote, “I took four pictures of the machine when some of the workman noted the fact and notified Mr. Johnson. He demanded that I should give up the films. At first, I refused and started to leave the grounds. Mr. Johnson and several others left the machine and came running up to me demanding the films, saying that they could not allow any pictures of the wrecked machine to be made.”⁷

It was here that violence started to creep in. In Lorin's camera was proof that the altered Langley plane still couldn't fly, and the futures of Langley, Walcott, and Curtiss were riding on the contents of the Wright brother's camera: “At this juncture a man who I am informed was Mr. Henry Weyman came up and apparently took charge of the situation. He insisted that I should not leave the grounds until I had delivered up my pack of films. I asked him why. He replied because of legal complications they wanted no pictures of the machine in its present condition to get out.”⁸

At that point, Lorin Wright was surrounded by men who were not letting him leave. It was incredible to think that the brother of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who was holding proof of a fraud being perpetrated against the history of flight, a company, the holders of a patent, and in a sense the American people, was being held against his will. Lorin liked the idea of a being a secret agent, but he was really just a family man. “I finally yielded the film pack and he insisted on supplying me with another to replace it. I insisted that he should not but he sent a boy on a wheel uptown and in a few minutes the boy returned with a pack.”9 The contest of wills became intertwined here, and the situation became even more dangerous. Mr. Weyman insisted that Lorin take the replacement film. “I refused and Mr. Weyman laid the pack on my knee. (I had gone over and sat down on the edge of the runway.) I laid the pack down on the runway and left it there.”¹⁰

Clearly Weyman wanted no one to be able to say that he stole Lorin Wright's film. He had merely replaced it. This ominous standoff ended, and Lorin reported back to Orville that the aerodrome was in the process of being heavily altered so it would fly. Orville thanked him and pondered on what to do. The Smithsonian was intent on rewriting history with a clear message to the world. In this alternate narrative being written by the Smithsonian, the Wrights may have been the first to fly, but Langley had been capable of doing it before them. If such a fabrication went public, it would destroy their pioneer status as patent holders and, worse, distort the history of flight for all time. He must do something that would make Walcott and the Smithsonian sorry they had ever cooked up this scheme to defraud both him and Wilbur. It had to be something that would put the issue front and center and would make the world take notice.

When Curtiss returned to his factory, he called Secretary Walcott and A. F. Zahm and let them know that the tests were a great success. They were overjoyed and lost no time in publishing the results of the tests in the 1914 Smithsonian Annual Report. Zahm led off by claiming that “with its original structure and power, the 1903 Aerodrome is capable of flying with a pilot and several hundred pounds of useful load. It is the first airplane in history of which this can be truthfully said.”¹¹ Zahm followed up by reporting that the Langley flyer had flown “without modification.” He concluded by saying, “the Langley aerodrome without floats, restored to its original condition and provided with stronger bearings, should be able to carry a man and sufficient supplies for a voyage lasting the whole day.”¹²

A year after, a 1915 report finished the job by stating, “the tests thus far made have shown that former Secretary Langley had succeeded in building the first airplane capable of sustained free flight with a man.”13 In other words, Wilbur Wright and his brother Orville would no longer be the first men to build a plane capable of heavier-than-air flight with an engine. Samuel Langley had beaten them to the punch. If the 1903 Langley flyer was a bullet, then the Wright brothers’ legacy was the target. Their pioneer patent would certainly be in danger.

Curtis then shipped the Langley aerodrome back from Hammondsport, and Walcott quietly had it returned to its original 1903 condition and had it exhibited in the Arts and Industries Building with a label, “The First Man-Carrying Aeroplane in the History of the World Capable of Sustained Free Flight.”¹⁴ The cover-up was complete. Walcott had his trophy that would rescue not only his reputation but also the Smithsonian's and Langley's. He never thought Orville Wright might object, and who cared if they did? The Wright family could not really do anything. They could still say the Wright brothers were the first men to fly; they just couldn't say that they had invented the first airplane. Langley and the Smithsonian had done that.

The fix was in, and Walcott could now claim that Langley had been vindicated and by proxy his and the Smithsonian's reputations were restored. No longer would there be derision when Langley's aerodrome was spoken of. Now Langley had been the man who had solved the problem of flight, and the proof was on display at the Smithsonian. And for Glenn Curtiss, it was a dagger to the heart of the sanctimonious Wright brothers and their claim to a pioneer patent.

Walcott was only too glad he had turned down the Wright offer to display the 1903 Flyer years before in 1910. Now there was the Langley flyer saying that here was the plane that had solved the problem of manned flight. He would eventually put the 1903 Wright Flyer in the Smithsonian; he was sure Orville Wright would donate it, since he had already offered the Flyer to the Smithsonian once before.

When in 1915 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asked to exhibit the 1903 Flyer, Orville and Jim Jacobs, who worked for the Wright Company, began to put the old flyer back together. They used new material only when absolutely necessary and fixed the damage the wind gust had caused when John Daniels was thrown off his feet. The year after Walcott put Langley's plane on display in the Smithsonian, claiming it was the first airplane capable of flight, “the world's first airplane was displayed at MIT on June 11–13, 1916.”15

Walcott immediately requested to have the Wright machine displayed at the Smithsonian as well, but Orville did not even consider the request. The Smithsonian was sticking by the Hammondsport trials and claiming that Langley had built the world's first flyable airplane. Orville finally had a chance for revenge. The 1903 Flyer was exhibited at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exhibition in the Grand Central Palace in New York in 1917 and then twice in Dayton during the years 1918–1925.¹⁶

In 1925, Orville played his card against Walcott and the Smithsonian. If they continued to support the claim that Langley's plane had been airworthy in 1903, then they would not get the 1903 Flyer that was the first plane to fly, and not only would the Smithsonian lose Wilbur Wright's vision of a manned flight, but the United States as a country would lose the Flyer. He would send it to the Science Museum in London.¹⁷ Secretary Walcott was sure Orville was bluffing. Surely, he would not ship away a national treasure that belonged to America.