Sold – Orville Wright Defends the Wright Brothers as the

Although the Wrights initially received wide public acclaim for their invention of the airplane, many of those interested in aviation were jealous or quickly caught up by greed. The prominent Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian Institution had spent a fortune trying to build a workable airplane and failed, and he and others like him claimed that much of the glory belonged to them as true scientists, rather than to some bicycle repairmen from Dayton, Ohio.

Early airplane developers knew full well that they were in business because of the Wright Brothers, but were motivated by avarice, not wanting to pay the license fee the Wrights asked when others employed their method of lateral control in heavier-than-air flight. To escape this fee, the budding aviation industry engaged in a prolonged smear campaign against the Wrights, minimizing their contributions in the invention of the airplane. Moreover, an ugly patent fight erupted.

The Wrights brought suit against Glenn Curtiss, who was selling airplanes with their aileron control without paying them royalties. To fight the suit, Curtiss enlisted Albert Zahm, then on the staff at the Smithsonian. Zahm, with his public forum through his position there and later at the Library of Congress, was especially effective in trivializing the Wright’s role. The belittling campaign against the Wrights must be counted as sadly effective. Today the average man recognizes the Wrights as the inventors of the airplane, but a common attitude toward them is that they were bicycle mechanics who were aided by happenstance. Few realize the genius the Wrights brought to their invention.

The National Aeronautics Association (NAA), led by its president, William Enyart, published a periodical called National Aeronautics. In 1944 it ran an article the captions of which implied that the Wright Brothers were really not innovators or true inventors of the airplane, but took work done by others and put it together into a workable package. This was the Zahm argument and absolutely infuriated Orville Wright, who wrote Enyart on July 14, 1944 that he considered it a conscious attempt to discredit the Wrights by those who had for three decades been guilty of “outrageous falsehoods,” and cited an article in The Smithsonian Magazine making similar claims in 1942 which had finally been retracted.

On July 17, William P. McCracken answered Wright’s letter on behalf of Enyart. McCracken had been the first Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, and in that capacity was the first Federal regulator of aviation. When the Department of Commerce began issuing aviator’s licenses, his was number 1. Afterwards, he continued to work in the field of aviation, and was general counsel to the NAA. His letter said that when he read the captions, “I felt sick.” He profusely apologized, but insisted that the errors were unintentional and did not want to fire the author. Wright responded with the clear message that the airplane was the Wright’s original invention.

Typed Letter Signed on his personal letterhead, one page 4to, July 19, 1944 to McCracken. “I have your letter of July 17th in which you ask that copies of the letters, which convinced me that Cohen fully understood the purport of what he was doing when he wrote the captions under the photographs in the June number of “National Aeronautics”, be sent to Mr. Enyart. Without permission from the correspondents, I cannot do that. But such evidence is not needed. The article itself is as good evidence as should be needed to convince any intelligent person the article was not a result of carelessness. Can any one for an instant think the caption under the 1903 Kitty Hawk plane was accidentally so written? Did the author of that caption think he was stating a generally recognized fact in history when he made it appear that the Wright Brothers’ only contribution was a 12 h.p. motor, everything else in their machine having been known to their predecessors? He may have written the caption under the Langley machine through ignorance, for what is there stated concerning the Langley machine had been published thousands of times. But such ignorance was inexcusable for anyone on an aeronautical magazine after Dr. Abbot’s correction of these misstatements in Smithsonian publications and daily papers throughout the country. There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Mr. Cohen’s defense that the errors were made through “carelessness” is a very peculiar one. But whether it was his carelessness, his incompetence or his ill-will is not important. The author is a dangerous person on any publication of the N.A.A. If the N.A.A. permits such careless, incompetent or malicious persons to remain on its staff, regardless of present shortage of manpower, the organization is a menace to society.”

This is an important and historic defense of the Wright Brothers. The anger here that anyone should dare suggest that their contribution was not original (but in fact derivative if not trivial, merely adding a 12 h.p. engine to a machine essentially invented by Langley and others), constitutes the Wright’s definitive statement that they invented the airplane. Included is McCracken’s unsigned copy of Wright’s letter of July 14; both items come from McCracken’s estate.