THE WRIGHT PLANE IN FRANCE. The plane is being hauled from one field to another, near Le Mans, France, in August, 1908.
The Wrights’ bid was accepted on February 8, 1908.
As it happened, this was not the only important contract the Wrights entered into at about that time. On March 3, three weeks after the Signal Corps had accepted their bid, they closed a contract with Lazare Weiller, a wealthy Frenchman, to form a syndicate to buy the rights to manufacture, sell, or license the use of the Wright plane in France. Upon completion of certain tests of the machine, the Wrights were to receive a substantial amount in cash, a block of stock, and provision for royalties. The French company would be known as La Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne. A member of the syndicate was M. Deutsch de la Meurthe who had taken steps toward forming a French company some time previously.
THE WRIGHTS AND WILBUR’S FRENCH PUPILS. Left to right, Captain Lucas-Girardville, Comte Charles de Lambert, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, and Paul Tissandier, at Pau, France, early in 1909.
One provision of the U. S. War Department contract was that the Government could deduct ten per cent of the purchase price for each mile per hour that the machine fell short of the forty-mile goal. That is, if it went only thirty-nine miles an hour, the Wrights would be docked ten per cent; if only thirty-eight miles, another ten per cent, and so on. If the machine did not do at least thirty-six miles an hour, then the Government didn’t have to accept it at all. On the other hand, the Wrights would receive a ten per cent bonus for each mile per hour they attained above forty.
It was the intention of the Signal Corps, and the Wrights so understood it, that these reduced or additional payments would be for either a mile or a fraction of a mile. But a Government legal department made a surprising interpretation of that part of the contract. If at the time of the tests the plane went 40-99/100 miles, the Wrights would not be paid for more than 40; but if the plane fell short of 40 miles an hour by only 1/100 of a mile, or even less, then they would be docked for a full mile.
(Orville did not learn of that astounding example of the legal mind at work until after he arrived at Washington to prepare for the tests and it was then too late to build a faster plane. But in the final tests the next year, he had a plane that he knew would give the buyer no opportunity to take advantage of what he regarded as a one-sided interpretation of the contract.)
Though the Wrights had done no flying since October, 1905, they had done much work on improving both plane and engine. Their newest engine, capable of producing about thirty-five horsepower continuously, was also so much better as to reliability that now long flights could be made without danger of failure of the motive power.
During all their experiments at the Huffman pasture they had continued to ride “belly-buster,” as a boy usually does when coasting on a sled. Lying flat in that way and controlling the mechanism partly by swinging the hips from one side to the other was good enough for the experimental stages of aviation; but the Wrights knew that if a plane was to have practical use the pilot must be able to take an ordinary sitting position and do the controlling and guiding with his hands and feet as in an automobile. It was not all fun lying flat for an hour at a time with head raised to be on the lookout for possible obstacles. “I used to think,” said Orville in later years, “the back of my neck would break if I endured one more turn around the field.”