At some distance, directly in front of Wilbur as he started to rise, were tall trees, but they gave him no concern. He bore off easily to the left and went ahead in a curve that brought him back almost over the starting point. Then he swung to the right and made another great turn. Most of the time he was thirty or thirty-five feet above the ground. He was in the air only one minute and forty-five seconds, but he had made history.
The crowd knew well they had “seen something” and behaved accordingly. In the excited babel of voices one or two phrases could be heard again and again. “Cet homme a conquis l’air!” “Il n’est pas bluffeur!” Yes, truly Wilbur had conquered the air, and he was no bluffer. That American word “bluffer” had been much used during the time that reports from the United States about the Wrights had been stirring controversy in France. Now “bluffeur” became, more than ever, a part of the French language. “To think that one would call the Wrights ‘bluffeurs’!” lamented the French press over and over again.
For the next few minutes after Wilbur landed, Berg was kept busy laughingly warding off agitated Frenchmen who sought to bestow a formal accolade by kissing Wilbur in the French manner on both cheeks. He suspected that Wilbur might consider that carrying enthusiasm too far.
One of the skeptical members of the Aéro Club, Edouard Surcouf, a balloonist, had arrived at the field late, barely in time to see Wilbur in the air. Now he was about the most enthusiastic of all. He rushed up to Berg, exclaiming: “C’est le plus grand erreur du siècle!” Disbelieving the claims of the Wrights may not have been the biggest error of the century, but obviously it had at least been a mistake.
The only person who offered criticism or minimized the brilliance of his feat was Wilbur Wright. When asked by a reporter for the Paris edition of the New York Herald if he was satisfied with the exhibition, he replied, according to that paper: “Not altogether. When in the air I made no less than ten mistakes owing to the fact that I have been laying off from flying so long; but I corrected them rapidly, so I don’t suppose anyone watching really knew I had made any mistake at all. I was very pleased at the way my first flight in France was received.”
A crowd of Aéro Club members and other admirers were insistent that Wilbur should go back to Paris with them to celebrate the achievement at the best dinner to be obtained in that center of inspired cooking. But Wilbur just thanked them and said he wished to give his machine a little going over. Early that evening, so the newspapers reported, “he was asleep at the side of his creation.”
The French press the next day not only treated the flight as the biggest news, but was unsparing in its praise, as were various rivals in the field of aviation who were quoted. All admitted that there was a world of difference between the best French plane yet produced and the one Wilbur Wright had just demonstrated. The Figaro said: “It was not merely a success but a triumph; a conclusive trial and a decisive victory for aviation, the news of which will revolutionize scientific circles throughout the world.” Le Journal observed that: “It was the first trial of the Wright airplane, whose qualities have long been regarded with doubt, and it was perfect.”
Louis Bleriot, member of the Aéro Club, wealthy manufacturer of automobile headlights, and himself a flyer, was quoted in Le Matin as saying: “The Wright machine is indeed superior to our airplanes.”
As early as May, 1908, when the Wrights were still at Kitty Hawk, the Frenchman, Henri Farman, had issued a challenge to them to participate in a flying contest, for $5,000—later raised to $10,000. But the challenge, made only in public prints, was never sent directly to the Wrights. It may have been simply what today would be called a “publicity stunt.” (Farman’s best straightaway flight of about a mile and a quarter had been made at Issy, France, on March 21, 1908.) Nothing more was heard of the Farman challenge now. A French paper commented that the Farman plane and also that of Léon Delagrange were approximate copies of the Wright plane but that the Wright machine “seems more solid, more controllable, and more scientific.”
Two days after that first demonstration, on August 10, Wilbur made two more short flights, the first one a figure eight, and the other, three complete circles. He flew on August 11 for 3 minutes 43 seconds; the next day, 6 minutes 56 seconds; and on August 13, 8 minutes 13.2 seconds. This time he did seven wide “orbes,” as the French described them. In landing that day Wilbur broke the left wing of his plane and repairs kept him from flying until August 21. He took time out on August 24 to attend an agricultural fair where reporters observed that he seemed much interested in pigs and cattle and, as one paper expressed it, “talked much more freely about them than about aviation.”