First in Flight Page 9

  They then built a couple of wind tunnels, the second of which was a six-foot-long wooden box with a viewing window on the upper side. A fan directed a constant twenty-seven-mile-per-hour wind through the box. One homemade balance made of hacksaw blades and wire measured the lift of their miniature wing surfaces and another measured the ratio of lift to drag.

  The Wrights generally shunned empirical—trial and error—testing. Men like Samuel Langley and Octave Chanute had the means to build and test a variety of designs to see which performed the best. By contrast, the Wrights, operating on a modest budget and on time stolen from their bicycle business, needed a reasonable assurance of success in advance. Having the time and money for only one machine per season, they had to know their gliders would fly before they ever built them.

  In their wind-tunnel tests, they enjoyed a luxury they didn’t have when experimenting with full-scale craft. Cutting sheet metal into six-inch miniature wings was cheap. They could fashion as many configurations as they liked. Over the course of several weeks, they determined the wing curvature that was most efficient at a variety of angles to the wind. They determined exactly where the highest point of a wing should be, how wide a wing should be from front to back in relation to its span, how far apart the upper and lower wings of a biplane should be, whether the upper and lower wings should have the same curvature, and what the shape of the leading edge of a wing should be.

  Though other experimenters had performed wind-tunnel tests on wing sections, no one had successfully quantified such things before. Some were hampered by a lack of mechanical ability. George Spratt, for example, spent more time in trying to carve a few simple wing sections than the Wrights did in making dozens of sections and performing hundreds of tests on them. Others were at a loss as to how to take accurate measurements, the task being to suspend a wing section in an enclosed space so that it could move freely, then devise a means of calculating the effects of the wind blowing over it. Still others were doomed by inconsistent experimental methods, or by a poor understanding of the full range of variables that needed to be tested.

  It was an enormous and complicated task, but one the Wrights completed with great speed.

  Critics like Edward Huffaker may have been motivated by sour grapes, but they were more right than they realized when they said that Wilbur and Orville had little idea why their machines flew. Airplanes had been flying for years before it was explained precisely how a curved wing surface generates lift. Wright biographer Tom Crouch makes the case that the brothers were engineers, not scientists. Scientists seek to understand why phenomena occur, while engineers seek to solve practical problems. Sometimes, engineering precedes science—a new machine can be made to work before anyone understands why it works.

  All the information the Wrights accumulated that winter still didn’t tell them how to build a light, powerful motor, how to craft an efficient propeller, and how to design a control system to turn an airplane in flight. Nonetheless, unlike anyone before them, they now knew how to make wings that could fly.

  Augustus Herring

  Between the 1901 and 1902 seasons, Wilbur considered moving the gliding experiments from the Outer Banks. He broached the subject in a letter to Chanute in late May: “If we could depend on proper winds, we would probably spend July and August at Kitty Hawk…. But we are dubious about the winds and weather after our experience of last year…. It is a pity that the hills near Chicago are not smooth bare slopes.”

  In addition to the fickle winds and weather of the Outer Banks, there was also the great travel distance, the uncomfortable conditions, the difficulty of obtaining supplies, and the mosquitoes. In many regards, it would have been easier to experiment elsewhere.

  Judging from his response on May 30, Chanute was pleased that the site of his aeronautical triumph of 1896—and a site much nearer his home—was under consideration: “If you are to have leisure before July 1, I would be very glad to go with you to the hills near Chicago, to have you judge of the safety of carrying on your experiments there.”

  Wilbur dropped one final hint in his letter to Chanute dated June 2: “We could arrange to come up to the Lake Michigan sand hills and spend a little time spying out the most suitable locations.”

  After that, the matter was laid to rest. Wilbur never made any such scouting trip. How serious he was about not returning to the Outer Banks is uncertain. On July 9, he wrote Chanute about expanding the camp building at Kill Devil Hills, hardly a sign he wanted to go elsewhere.

  As in 1901, Chanute was playing a greater role in organizing their camp than the Wrights would have liked. Wilbur and Orville worked best alone. Chanute, on the other hand, was still fond of the idea of a group of experimenters gathering to test a variety of craft. Chanute had extended so many offers of money and equipment, had given such steady encouragement, had been so free with aeronautical information, and was such a valuable sounding board on engineering matters that the Wrights couldn’t flatly refuse him. All they could do was try to contain his enthusiasm and limit the growth of their camp.

  Chanute planned to fill the Wrights’ hangar with gliders.

  First, he contracted with Charles Lamson to build a folding-wing craft. Lamson was a Maine native who in 1895 had become the first man to fly a Lilienthal glider in the United States. After that, he had built a man-carrying kite of his own. He had since moved to California and gone into the jewelry business. Chanute’s offer of a construction contract was his attempt to bring Lamson back into the aeronautical fold.

  Next, he offered the Wrights a contract to build new versions of his original triplane and Katydid designs of 1896. The brothers had no interest in tinkering with Chanute’s failed designs of six years ago, but out of courtesy, they agreed to accept his proposal and then subcontract the actual building of the gliders to someone else. That way, they would only be responsible for overseeing the project, not for the finished gliders themselves.

  Before this came to pass, Chanute was contacted by an old associate, Augustus Herring, his principal pilot from the Indiana dunes experiments. Finding his fortunes at an ebb, Herring appealed to Chanute to help him get back into the mainstream of aeronautics. Knowing something of Chanute’s current loyalties, Herring even teased him with the boast that, given a fair opportunity, he could “beat Mr. Wright.” Intrigued by Herring’s brashness, Chanute asked Wilbur if he would be willing to back out of the proposed construction contract so that it could be given to Herring. Wilbur was happy to oblige.

  The prospect of opening their camp to gliders they knew were inferior was burden enough for the Wrights. Hosting Augustus Herring was something else altogether. His current misfortune notwithstanding, Herring was probably the most accomplished glider pilot alive. He had flown craft of several different designs and even made a couple of respectable attempts at powered flight. Chanute wrote Wilbur that he wanted either Herring or William Avery, his other main pilot from the Indiana dunes, to come to their camp to participate in the tests. Knowing something of Herring, Wilbur stated his strong preference for Avery. He got Herring.

  Augustus Herring was born in 1867 at either Covington or Sommerville, Georgia. He came from a distinguished family. His maternal great-grandfather was the man for whom Conyers, Georgia, was named, and his father was a wealthy cotton broker. His family moved to New York when he was sixteen.

  Though he received a first-class education at boarding schools in Switzerland and Germany, Herring was not a gifted student. He entered the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1884 to study mechanical engineering but had difficulty with his coursework in mathematics, analytical chemistry, and drafting. His passion for aeronautics, which had begun when he was thirteen, did him more harm than good at Stevens. After agreeing to write his undergraduate thesis on marine engines, he began lobbying to submit one called “The Heavier than Air Flying Machine as a Mechanical Engineering Problem.” It being the age of Darius Green, the faculty would have none of that. Herring left school
in the second half of his fourth year without graduating.

  During his college days, Herring’s mind was occupied more with building gliders than with his studies. In 1887, he constructed a small-scale craft. The following year, he built one of man-carrying size. It failed in testing.

  His father died around this time, leaving Herring with an inheritance that allowed him to pursue his hobby seriously. According to researcher Eugene Husting, Herring’s career began to gather momentum when he purchased a monoplane glider from Otto Lilienthal. He then built two gliders of a similar type, of such a degree of sophistication that they were held together by hollow bolts to save weight. He tested those craft in 1894 in an open area of the West Bronx.

  Like Edward Huffaker, Herring was an associate of both Octave Chanute and Samuel Langley. Unlike Huffaker, it was Herring who was sought out by his elders.

  Chanute was impressed with Herring’s observations of birds, his ability to express wind effects in engineering terms, even his facility with languages, picked up during his boarding-school days. For a time, he apparently relied on Herring for translations of German aeronautical material. Most important, Chanute, despite his considerable study of the subject, had never flown, and Herring had. He wanted to learn everything Herring could tell him. In late 1894, Chanute engaged him to build a series of model gliders.

  The following May, just as Chanute was about to start work on a man-carrying craft, Herring was hired by Langley to head the aerodynamics experiments at the Smithsonian. From the days of his “whirling table” experiments, Langley mistakenly believed that flat wings generated more lift than curved, and it is Herring who is credited with convincing him otherwise. Herring also designed the high-temperature burner for the steam engines that powered Langley’s small-scale Aerodromes.

  Herring was back in Chanute’s employ by 1896, having split from the Smithsonian. Over his entire career, Herring never got along with any of his associates for long. He thought Samuel Langley was difficult. He thought Octave Chanute was senile. He thought the Wright brothers were pilferers.

  A number of young men made glides during the Indiana dunes experiments, among them three “professional” aeronauts, Chanute’s son Charles, and several newspaper reporters who wandered into camp and were invited to try their hand. A natural pilot, Herring was easily the finest of the group, with numerous glides stretching into the hundreds of feet. His two best efforts reportedly stretched 359 feet. Some accounts claim he made as many as 1,200 flights.

  Meanwhile, he managed to alienate everyone in camp. One of the craft being tested was an ungainly contraption nicknamed the Albatross, designed by Paul Butusov, a Russian. Herring considered the craft dangerous and refused to work on it. In fact, he was disinclined to exert any effort toward testing ideas that didn’t originate with himself. In an experiment grounded in joint participation and mutual encouragement, the effect was divisive.

  Later, he and Chanute argued over who was the moving force behind the biplane craft tested that season, the best glider in the world before the Wrights. Chanute gave Herring credit only for designing the tail section, while Herring claimed the general design of the entire craft was his.

  They finally parted company over the issue of powered flight. Herring believed that the breakthrough was finally at hand, that his and Chanute’s biplane design could be modified for a motor and propellers. Chanute was pleased with the glider trials, but not so pleased that he couldn’t recognize that powered flight was still a remote goal. Herring left camp to begin work on a powered machine while Chanute’s experiments were ongoing.

  Around this time, Herring exhausted his inheritance. On the other hand, he found himself a patron: Matthias Arnot, a young banker from Elmira, New York. Arnot put Herring on a modest salary and bankrolled his major construction expenses.

  Herring got married during this period to Lillian Mullen, one of five daughters of a New York banker. The couple took up residence in St. Joseph, Michigan, a town chosen partly for its fine machine facilities and its stretch of beach on the Lake Michigan shore, ideal for testing a powered craft. Herring opened a motorcycle shop and began publishing a magazine called Gas, which sung the praises of light gasoline engines suitable for bicycles and—quite optimistically—airplanes.

  In 1897, Herring and Arnot went to the Indiana dunes to test a new biplane glider that would be the basis for their powered craft. The results were outstanding, with early glides of two and three hundred feet and best efforts reportedly stretching six hundred feet. On hand to witness some of the trials, Chanute took photographs of the craft in flight. Since his photographs of the 1896 biplane—a nearly identical craft—were of poor quality, Chanute later used his shots of Herring’s glider in lectures and publications without asking Herring’s permission or even identifying the substitution. This deepened the rift between the two.

  Augustus Herring’s methods differed dramatically from those of the other aeronautical experimenters of his age. In an effort to avoid publicity, Samuel Langley retreated behind high fences to conduct his tests. Octave Chanute moved his camp from one location to another in the Indiana dunes to make it less accessible to reporters. Wilbur and Orville Wright traveled to a place reached only by boat. But Augustus Herring courted publicity. He had already contacted Barnum and Bailey about the possibility of exhibition gliding. During his 1897 tests, he made sure the press was aware of what he was doing, turning reporters’ attention to his advantage with considerable sophistication. Many members of the aeronautical community resented him for it.

  Back in St. Joseph, Herring set to work on a powered version of the biplane, contracting the building of the frame to a local boatyard while he took responsibility for the engine. The wings of the new craft were eighteen feet from tip to tip and fifty-four inches from front to back. Unable to design a gasoline engine that met his requirements for lightness and power, Herring settled upon a small compressed-air motor. It would turn two five-foot propellers, one a tractor and the other a pusher—one was mounted in front of the wings and the other behind the wings, in other words. The completed craft weighed only eighty-eight pounds.

  On October 3, 1898, Herring spoke to a reporter about his vision of the future of aviation. Though he did not expect airplanes to ever carry more than two people, he predicted speeds of seventy-five miles per hour and flights of up to four hundred miles. He also predicted that air travel would one day be the cheapest form of transportation, with costs as low as a quarter-cent per mile.

  Eight days later, Herring proved just how distant those dreams were. Retrieving his craft from where it was stored in a dance pavilion on the Lake Michigan shore, he rolled it out onto Silver Beach, near St. Joseph, and, with Arnot as a witness, made a powered hop of fifty feet against a wind of twenty or twenty-five miles per hour, his feet barely clearing the ground. As with the Wright brothers’ powered flights of 1903, the distance covered is more impressive than it seems. Against such a stiff wind, his hop of 50 feet over the ground was equivalent to a distance of about 260 feet through the air.

  Encouraged, Herring wanted to orchestrate another attempt in front of a more substantial group of witnesses. Octave Chanute, at the top of Herring’s list, was summoned by telegram. Chanute came promptly but left when the wind failed to pick up. He thought little of Herring at that point and even less of the immediate prospects for powered flight.

  Herring’s second hop took place on October 22 in front of witnesses variously identified as Arnot, a couple of reporters, a hot-dog vendor on the beach, and several boys watching surreptitiously from behind some bushes. This time, in his eight or ten seconds in the air, he covered about 75 feet over the ground against a wind of about twenty-six miles per hour, for the equivalent of about 350 feet through the air. Arnot had a camera, but he was too preoccupied to snap a picture until the very end. He caught Herring just at the point of landing.

  Compared with most newsmen of the period covering the subject of flight, the reporter for the Benton Harbor Eve
ning News who witnessed Herring’s experiment that day had a remarkably balanced view. While characterizing Herring’s effort as “the first time in the world’s history that a true flying machine … has ever carried its operator in successful flight,” he correctly reported that the craft was suited only for “short flights” and “experimental purposes,” and he described its progress through the air as “remarkably slow.”

  Experts are agreed that Augustus Herring did not achieve powered flight, which is defined as sustained, controlled movement through the air free of ground effect, with the point of takeoff no higher than the point of landing. Anything short of that is considered a “powered leap” or an “airborne condition,” less rigorously defined as merely moving through the air upon wings that generate lift. That is how Herring’s efforts of October 1898 are categorized. He is justly credited with being the first American to achieve a “powered leap” or an “airborne condition”—no small feat.

  To his credit, he never claimed otherwise, saying only that his efforts had proven powered flight “solvable.” In fact, with his compressed-air motor capable of delivering just three to five horsepower for a maximum of thirty seconds, he had never considered his 1898 craft more than a kind of intermediate stage between a glider and a powered flyer.