In the next letter from the Ordnance Board, dated May 22, 1907, nothing was said about the Wrights’ suggestion for a conference; but the Wrights were requested to make a formal proposal incorporating the specifications and conditions contained in their letter to the Board, dated May 17.
The Wrights sent a formal proposal on May 31. In this proposal they repeated all the specifications and conditions mentioned in their letter of the 17th, and in addition agreed to the following: to teach an operator to fly the machine; to return to the starting point in the 50 kilometer test flight; and to land without any damage that would prevent the machine being started immediately upon another flight. The price stated was $100,000 for the first machine; others to be furnished at a reasonable margin above the cost of manufacture. They added that they were willing to make the contract speed 40 miles an hour, provided an additional sum would be allowed for each mile in excess of that speed in the trial flight, with a forfeit of an equal amount for every mile below. Again the Wrights made it plain that nothing was to be paid to them until after a trial flight had met all contract requirements.
The next letter from the Ordnance Board dated June 8 said that $100,000 was more than the Board had available, and that such an amount could not be obtained without a special appropriation by Congress at its next session. Then the letter went on to ask what the price would include; whether the United States would be granted exclusive use, or whether the Wrights contemplated commercial exploitation of their machine, or negotiations with foreign governments.
The Wrights wrote in reply explaining just what was included in the price. They said it did not include any period during which the use of the invention would belong exclusively to the United States, since a recent contract precluded such an offer, and that it was their intention to furnish machines for military use before entering the commercial field. The letter repeated what the Wrights had said before, that when a contract had been signed they would produce a machine at their own expense and make flights as specified in the contract in the presence of representatives of the War Department before any money whatever was paid to them.
That was the last letter to pass between the Ordnance Board and the Wrights for some time. But while the Wrights were in Europe, the Board undoubtedly began to hear from military attachés and others about the brothers’ negotiations abroad. At any rate, the Board began to show signs of uneasiness and they wrote a letter, signed by Major Fuller, October 5—received by the Wrights in Europe—to say that the Wright proposal of June 15 had again been given consideration by the Board at its meeting of October 3, 1907, but that nothing definite could be done before a meeting of Congress, as Congressional action would be necessary to accept the proposition, since the funds at the Board’s disposal were insufficient.
The Wrights’ reply, from London, on October 30, made it clear that if the price was the only thing in the way, that could probably be satisfactorily adjusted.
Wilbur Wright started home from Europe ahead of Orville, but before he left, it was agreed between the brothers that their price for an airplane to the United States Government would be $25,000.
XI
EUROPE DISCOVERS THE WRIGHTS
Though the importance of the Wrights’ achievements was unrecognized in the United States until long after their first power flights, reports about their gliding prior to those flights had aroused much interest abroad.
In the spring of 1903, the Wrights’ Chicago friend, Octave Chanute, had gone to his native France in the interest of the St. Louis Exposition to be held the next year. One purpose of his visit was to arrange with Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aeronaut, who lived in Paris, to make flights at St. Louis with his dirigible balloon. While in Paris, Chanute was invited by the Aéro Club to give a talk regarding aviation in the United States. In this talk, on April 2, he told of his own gliding experiments in 1896 and of those of the Wright Brothers in 1901 and 1902, illustrated by photographs. Then in the August, 1903, issue of L’Aérophile Chanute published an article on the same subject, with photographic illustrations, scale drawings, and structural details of the Wright 1902 glider. In the Revue des Sciences of November, 1903, he again published photographs and description of that machine. This 1902 glider far surpassed any that had ever been built before, and in it the problem of equilibrium had practically been solved. That glider was the basis of the specifications in the Wright patent. Chanute’s revelations therefore were sensational. And they did not fall on deaf ears.