THE U. S. ARMY TEST. Preparing the Wright plane for a test at Fort Myer.
What Weaver had written in his letter seemed convincing enough to Lahm and he prepared a French translation of it to read to the aviation committee of the Aéro Club of France at a meeting on the night of December 29, 1905. That meeting, as Lahm later told about it to friends, and in an article he gave to the Mansfield (Ohio) News, published October 24, 1908, was a memorable one. The skeptical members of the committee, greatly in the majority, having heard of Weaver’s telegram, assumed the more elaborate report would be favorable to the Wrights, and were prepared to combat it. Characteristic of the French, there was almost ceremonious politeness at the beginning of the meeting because everyone supposed there might be less politeness as the discussions went on.
AT FORT MYER. Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm and Orville Wright with the Wright plane during the test at Fort Myer. Lieutenant Lahm was the first army officer to fly as a passenger in a plane.
By the time Lahm had finished reading the letter, everyone began to talk at once. Archdeacon, who presided, was famous for a high-pitched staccato voice and it could be heard calling for order as he also rapped on the table before him with a flat metal ruler.
One member observed that they had seen nothing about the Wrights’ flights in American newspapers, recognized as enterprising. He found himself incapable of believing, he said, that all the journalists in America would permit so important a piece of news to escape them.
Another remarked that they had heard the Wright brothers were of modest enough wealth. Who, he asked, is their financier? It would be interesting to talk with him.
Lahm was hard put to it to explain the lack of news about the flights in the American papers. He himself didn’t understand that. But he tried to explain that since the brothers did most of the mechanical work on their machine themselves they did not require financial assistance. His voice, however, was drowned in the hubbub. As the discussion continued, so vehement were the contradictions of the Weaver letter that Lahm, Ferber, Besançon, and Coquelle, the only ones present who seemed to believe it, hardly dared express themselves at all. Someone turned to Coquelle and asked him if he really accepted the stories of the Wrights’ flights.
“I do,” he said—but in a low voice.