Wilbur Wright returned from Europe in November of 1907. But Orville remained a little longer to attend to having a number of engines built in Paris by the firm of Barriquand & Marre. The Wrights wanted to have in reserve duplicates of their American engine, at that time in customs, at Le Havre, for use the next year. Barriquand & Marre were manufacturers of precision instruments and had built light motors. They doubted if the Wright motor gave as much power as was claimed for it, but they felt sure that if it did, the copies they made of it—on account of more careful workmanship—would give considerably more power than the original. But as later events showed, they gave less. At that time it was not known that when one motor is made as an exact copy, to the thousandth of an inch, of another motor, of supposedly the same steels and other metals, but from different foundries and mills, months of experiment are required before the new motor can be made to work properly.
XIII
A DEAL WITH THE U. S.
While in Paris, in 1907, the Wrights naturally had visits with Frank S. Lahm, who had arranged with his brother-in-law, Henry Weaver, of Mansfield, to investigate the reports from America of human flight. Lahm invited the inventors to his home and there they met his son, Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm,[10] who was recuperating from an attack of typhoid fever. The younger Lahm, a former instructor at West Point, had recently spent a year at the French Cavalry School at Saumur. He, as well as his father, was much interested in aeronautics. The previous October he had won the James Gordon Bennett balloon race by starting at Paris and landing in England. Probably the only American Army officer who recognized that the airplane should now be taken seriously, he was delighted to meet the Wright brothers, with whom he now began a lasting friendship. After he had learned a little about their negotiations in France, he began to urge the United States War Department to take more interest in the airplane.
It so happened that, in September, 1907, only a few weeks after this meeting, Lieutenant Lahm was transferred by the War Department from the Cavalry to the Signal Corps, to be stationed at Washington. His first assignment was to make a tour of Europe, before returning to Washington, and report on the situation regarding dirigible aircraft in several countries. Soon afterward he returned to Washington. The presence of a man in the War Department there who felt enthusiasm for the airplane’s possibilities, and who had strong faith in the Wrights, may have had its effect on his associates. At any rate, there was now in the War Department a man who believed in the Wrights.
When Wilbur stopped in Washington shortly before Thanksgiving, 1907, en route to Dayton, on his return from France, he had a talk with General Crozier and Major Fuller of the Ordnance Department, and with General Allen, head of the Signal Corps—the organization that would conduct tests of the airplane and use it if the Ordnance Board sanctioned and provided funds for its purchase. At this meeting Wilbur stated the price the Wrights would accept ($25,000) and the performance of the machine that they were willing to guarantee. These terms, agreed upon between the brothers before Wilbur left France, were stiff enough, it was thought, to bar any competition. The Ordnance Board was to have a meeting on December 5, and Wilbur was invited to appear before it. He did so; but the meeting did not inspire him with confidence that an early contract could be obtained at the price of $25,000. The Wrights were not willing to accept less, because they thought they had better prospects abroad. However, the Signal Corps soon began drawing up specifications, and, on December 23, advertised for bids.
Inasmuch as the Wright machine was the only one in existence that could meet these requirements, and the price was understood in advance, advertising for bids may have been superfluous; but it was considered necessary to meet demands of red tape. Among specifications set forth in the advertisement for bids were these: the plane must be tested in the presence of Army officers; it must be able to carry for one hour a passenger besides the pilot, the two weighing not less than 350 lbs.; it must show an average speed of forty miles an hour, in a ten-mile test, and carry enough fuel for 125 miles. Also, the machine must have “demountability”; that is, it should be built in such a way that it could be taken apart, and later reassembled, without too much difficulty, when necessary to transport it on an army truck from one place to another.
Almost from the day the advertisements for bids appeared, the War Department was subject to editorial attacks—not because it had been so slow about interesting itself in the airplane, but because it had done so at all!
The New York Globe said:
One might be inclined to assume from the following announcement, “the United States Army is asking bids for a military airship,” that the era of practical human flight had arrived, or at least that the government had seriously taken up the problem of developing this means of travel. A very brief examination of the conditions imposed and the reward offered for successful bidders suffices, however, to prove this assumption a delusion.
A machine such as is described in the Signal Corps’ specifications would record the solution of all the difficulties in the way of the heavier-than-air airship, and, in fact, finally give mankind almost as complete control of the air as it now has of the land and the water. It would be worth to the world almost any number of millions of dollars, would certainly revolutionize warfare and possibly the transportation of passengers; would open to easy access regions hitherto inaccessible except to the most daring pioneers and would, in short, be probably the most epoch-making invention in the history of civilization.