“I don’t know what you’ll want to do about these,” Russell has reported Wilbur as jokingly saying; “maybe they should be opened. But of course if you open a letter, there’s always the danger that you may decide to answer it, and then you’re apt to find yourself involved in a long correspondence.”
At first The Wright Co. rented floor space in a factory building, but almost immediately the company started to build a modern factory of its own, and it was ready for use by November, 1910. Within a short time after the company started operations in its rented space it had a force of employees at mechanical work and was able to produce about two airplanes a month.
The Wrights well knew that the time was not yet for the company to operate profitably by selling planes for private use. Their main opportunity to show a good return on the capital invested would be from public exhibitions. Relatively few people in the United States had yet seen an airplane in flight and crowds would flock to behold this new miracle—still, in 1910, almost incredible.
As soon as they decided to give public exhibitions, the Wrights got in touch with another pioneer of the air, Roy Knabenshue, a young man from Toledo, who had been making balloon flights since his early teens, and was the first in the United States to have piloted a steerable balloon. They had previously become acquainted with Knabenshue. Because of his curiosity over anything pertaining to aerial navigation, he had once subscribed to a press-clipping bureau which sent him anything found in the papers about aeronautics; and in this way he had been able to read an occasional news item about the two Dayton men said to have flown. With a fairly irresistible impish grin, Knabenshue never had much trouble making new acquaintances, and he decided to call upon the Wrights.
That was before the Wright flights at Fort Myer and in France, and the brothers were not then interested when Knabenshue suggested that they sell him planes for exhibitions.
“Well,” he said, “I have been making airship flights at the big state fairs, besides promoting public exhibitions, and I know how to make the proper contacts. You may have heard about my flights in a small dirigible at the St. Louis World’s Fair. If you ever decide to give exhibitions, just let me know.”
Though exhibitions had been farthest from the Wrights’ thoughts at the time of that first meeting with Knabenshue, now the situation was different. Roy Knabenshue would probably be the very man they needed. They sent a telegram to him and he received it at Los Angeles. He wired back that he would see them as soon as he returned to Ohio. This he did soon afterward. The result of their conversation was that Roy took charge of the work of arranging for public flights. He had need of a competent secretary and an intelligent young woman, Miss Mabel Beck, came to take the job. This was her first employment and she seemed a bit ill at ease, lest her work might not be satisfactory; but almost immediately she became an extraordinarily good assistant—so good, in fact, that Wilbur Wright afterward selected her to work with him in connection with suits against patent infringers, and after his death she became secretary to Orville Wright, in which position, at this writing, she still is.
By the time Knabenshue had started planning for public exhibitions, Orville Wright had begun the training of pilots to handle the exhibition planes being built. The weather was still too wintry for flying at Huffman field, now leased by The Wright Co., and it was necessary to find a suitable place in a warmer climate. The field selected was at Montgomery, Alabama. (Today known as Maxwell Field, it is used by the United States Government.)
Shortly after his arrival at Montgomery, early in 1910, Orville Wright had a new experience in the air. While at an altitude of about 1,500 feet he found himself unable to descend, even though the machine was pointed downward as much as seemed safe. Brought up to have faith in the force of gravity, he didn’t know at first what to make of this. For nearly five minutes he stayed there, in a puzzled state of mind bordering on alarm. Later it occurred to him that the machine must have been in a whirlwind of rising air current of unusual diameter, and that doubtless he could have returned quickly to earth if he had first steered horizontally to get away from the rising current.
The first pilot Orville trained was Walter Brookins of Dayton. “Brookie” was a logical candidate for that distinction, for since the age of four he had been a kind of “pet” of Orville’s. After Orville had left Montgomery and returned to Dayton on May 8, Brookins himself became an instructor. He began, at Montgomery, the training of Arch Hoxsey, noted for his personal charm and his gay, immaculate clothes; and also that of Spencer C. Crane.