American History Tellers - The Wright Brothers | Controlling the Skies | 4

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk in December 1903, other air enthusiasts had tried to find the answer to powered, controlled human flight. And once Wilbur and Orville succeeded, many budding aviators flocked to the skies by building on their technology. Soon, despite their best efforts, the Wright Brothers would find it was nearly impossible to maintain a grip on the emerging aviation industry. Today, Lindsay is joined by historian and author Lawrence Goldstone. He’s the author of Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies. Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey history buffs, if you can't get enough of the captivating stories we uncover on American history tellers, you'll love the exclusive experience of Wondery+. Dive even deeper into the past with ad-free episodes, early access to new seasons, and bonus content that brings history to life like never before. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts and embark on an unparalleled journey through America's most pivotal moments. Imagine it's April 16, 1912. It's a cool, foggy morning and you're at the aerodrome outside Dover, England. You're an American journalist and aviator and today's the day you hope to make history by becoming the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel.

Your beautiful 50-horsepower Blario monoplane glistens in the morning mist as you check the engine, running your hands along the taut fabric of the wing. You're wearing your purple silk flying suit, which has become your trademark in the year since you became the first American woman to receive a pilot's license. You scan the horizon and note that the weather isn't ideal. The fog will limit your visibility over the channel and leave you without a way to navigate. Then as you turn to check your propeller, you hear someone approaching and can tell from the quick footsteps that it's your friend, the eager young German- flier, Gustav Hamel. Oh, good morning, Harriet.

You still mad at me? You give him a withering look, making it clear that he's not off the hook just yet. Only a few days ago, he flew across the channel with a female passenger. The newspapers gave her credit for being the first woman to cross the channel by air. Of course I'm still mad at you. You stole my thunder. Two of my sponsors had pulled their support. You knew I was planning to be the first. But you will be the first. The other woman was just a passenger.

Well, the newspapers don't seem to care about that. I'm sorry, Harriet. I really am. But I still think you'll make headlines. Though are you really planning to make your attempt today? The weather doesn't look great. Yes, I am. I've already delayed enough and my sponsors are getting testy." Hamill scratches his head, a look of worry on his face. It's going to be risky. Just an error of five miles off course will put you over the

open ocean. That could be disastrous. You shrug. You know it's a risk, but you're determined to fly today. Hamill places a hand on your arm. Listen, you know I've flown over the Channel a dozen times now. What if I flew instead of you? I could wear your purple suit. You'd meet me in Calais when I landed, and you'd hop in the cockpit and everyone would think you made the first flight. You look at Hamill, stunned. You want to laugh, but for a moment you can't even speak. Your mind flashes back to everyone who's told you flying was a man's game that

That's the craziest idea I've ever heard and a terrible one the whole point is to prove women are skilled adventurous pilots And will nod sheepishly All right, I should have known better than to suggest it But at least take this compass I can show you how to use it to stay on course, even if the clouds don't clear. You snatch the compass out of his hand, then look east from the cliffs of Dover out across the channel. Somewhere behind those clouds, 22 miles away,

is the beach at Calais. In a few hours, you'll be landing in France, and tonight, you'll be sipping champagne in celebration. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast. Listen as his celebrity guests try to persuade the Grinch that there's more to love about the holiday season. Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Grown-ups, enjoy bonus content of Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast exclusively

on Wondery Plus. Each morning, it's a new opportunity, a chance to start fresh. Up First from NPR makes each morning an opportunity to learn and to understand. Choose to join the world every morning with Up First, a podcast that hands you everything going on across the globe and down the street, all in 15 minutes or less. Start your day informed and anew with Up First by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. From Wander, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers, our history, your story. By 1912, nine years after the Wright brothers made their first engine-powered flights at

Kitty Hawk, the world of aviation had expanded. Among the early pioneers was Harriet Quimby, a theater critic and journalist who began flying in 1911, eventually becoming the first American woman to receive a pilot's license. And on April 16, 1912, she also became the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel. Unfortunately, her flight occurred just a day after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. Stories of that tragedy overshadowed Quimby's feet and just ten weeks later, she died during a flying demonstration in Massachusetts, joining the many casualties of the early days of flight.

Here with me today to discuss Harriet Quimby, the Wright brothers and other aviation pioneers is historian Lawrence Goldstone, award-winning author of 28 books, including Birdman, The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, and A Battle to Control the Skies. Here's our conversation. Lawrence Goldstone, welcome to American History Tellers. Thanks so much for having me, Lindsay. We spoke in our series about someone who had a significant impact on the Wright brothers, a German glider pilot, Otto Lilienthal.

He made around 2000 flights without stick or rudder or wing control in the late 19th century. I'd like you to place him and the burgeoning aviator scene at the turn of the 19th century in their time. It seems like this was a moment, a fertile moment for invention. It was an incredible period, not only for aviation, but for automobile technology and the submarine was being invented, Freud's theory of the unconscious mind, Einstein's

relativity, refrigeration. Lillian Thorne was a very interesting example of a step in an innovative process. In order to fly, there were any number of problems that had to be solved. The first and most obvious one was how to keep something in the air. In Roman times, they strapped wings to their slaves and had them jump off buildings, and of course they fell and died. So what Lillian Thal had figured out was that air moves in such a fashion that if you curve the airfoil, which is the wing for purposes that we're speaking about, the air will move over the camber, which is the curve, in such a way as to provide what was later called lift.

He had no interest in motors. He had no interest in steering. So what he did was he fashioned these airfoils and took measurements on what the camber was, the length of the wing, the width, the aspect ratio, which is the length times the width, and would run down hills with these wings strapped to him and glide. And at first, of course, everybody thought he was just one of these crazy people, but he did thousands of these and he took very, very careful measurements to find out what

the right structure of an airfoil would be. It was an interim step, but it was a necessary step. And in 1896, while trying one of these experiments, he evidently hit a thermal, dropped out of the sky, and was dead the next day. And that was big news. Lillian Thorne had become famous. And the notice of his death was read in Dayton by the proprietor of a bicycle shop named Wilbur Wright. And it was Wilbur and his brother that began working on their flying machines in this kind of innovative atmosphere of the time. But they weren't certainly not the only ones.

I wonder if you could give us an overview of the early aviation industry at the time. But they weren't certainly not the only ones. I wonder if you could give us an overview of the early aviation industry at the time. Well, I wouldn't call it an industry, but it had been a process that had been going on in a serious way, probably a century before Lilienthal. They called it the flying problem. And there were any number of experimenters. There was a man named Mouyar in Egypt. And one of the men who was not specifically involved was a man named Octave Chanute, probably the most famous civil engineer in America. He had built bridges that supposedly couldn't be built. And what he did, he started accumulating all the results of experiments, most of them failed, and created this

kind of database. And that information filtered out into the general public. And Chanute and the Wright brothers, Wilbur actually, corresponded for many years very amicably. And then there was a falling out that came later in the process. So what you had was people trying to figure out how to keep something in the air. And then the secondary problem was how do you power it? And then the third problem, which nobody was actually dealing with yet until Wilbur, was how do you control it? How do you steer? How do you keep this air machine from being just at the mercy of the wind and air currents? Wilbur was one of these people who stepped in,

in the middle of a process with an absolutely brilliant insight that got everything going. What had these earlier fliers, these aeronauts, not figured out about flight that was suddenly becoming apparent? flyers, these aeronauts, not figured out about flight that was suddenly becoming apparent? Well, the idea of control is very interesting because the first pioneers, Samuel Langley and a number of other people, just assumed that what you wanted was the machine, when it was finally finished, to be able to stay stable in the air. And in order to do that aerodynamically, the wings would come out from the center, it was too soon to call it a fuselage,

you can call it the frame, in kind of a V, which is called a dihedral. Because of the way air works, if one side dipped, it would naturally correct. The problem is, you couldn't really control it. If you started to crash, you would just crash. There was no way to steer except these long, very wide turns. What Wilbur realized was that the way to create stability was to make the craft inherently unstable. So the wings would come out from the airframe in his design in an anhedral, which is kind

of a little bit of an upside down V. If you go to the Smithsonian where they have the right flyer, you'll see that. What he did was devised a way to correct for the natural tendency of this craft to become uncontrolled, to pitch and eventually go straight down into the ground. His insight was absolutely necessary for controlled flight. There is no question that the Wright brothers were not the first people to create something that flew. They were the first people to create something that flew under control. The Wright Brothers' place in history is well regarded, but they started out as bicycle makers.

What are the parallels between bicycles and flight? People don't realize now is that bicycles were this incredible phenomenon because for the first time, I think in the 1880s, they got rid of the high wheeler, the ones you see sometimes in old carnivals where the first wheel is huge and the back wheel is tiny. You couldn't get on them, you couldn't control them, people would fall off. They developed this safety bicycle which is like today's bicycle, both wheels the same size. You could get on them, you could control them. Tens of millions were sold over the next 10 years. So when Orville and Wilbur went into the bicycle business, they were going into the hot business at the time. There were

millions, tens of millions of bicycles sold in the United States. Women did it. So the bicycle industry, you could call it the crypto of its time, it was just a huge burgeoning industry. So the Wright brothers had joined a bicycling club and Orville particularly was a terrific craftsman and then they started repairing the bicycles of all the people in the club when the bikes broke down. So they started a shop and then they started building bicycles. What Wilbur realized was that when you steer a bicycle, it tilts. If you're on a bicycle and try to keep it vertical to the ground while you're turning,

you end up in the bushes. And he was the first person to realize that if you bank it, tilt it, you can maintain control in a turn, and then supposedly from watching buzzards and how their wingtips moved while they were in flight. I was never quite sure about that because supposedly a lot of people watch birds and seagulls and when I went out to the beach I watched seagulls and I tried but I could not discern the movement of their wingtips. But Wilbur said he did, however he got the idea. He realized that by changing the angle of incidence is what they called it, how the

air hit the wingtips with one up and one down, you could both steer and you could maintain control. Today, the Wright brothers are regarded as first in flight, but we know they weren't the first in flight. There were conditions applied to that label. What were the criteria for winning this title in an airplane? Most people say first in flight,

synonymous with first in controlled flight. The idea that you could keep something in the air in a straight line, there were other people doing it. They certainly did it without motors. And a lot of times just people used to hang on to the frame while this glider moved down a hill, much the way Lilienthal did it. But first in flight means the first actual airplane. The first airplane that was a machine that wasn't simply a toy. By turning, by controlling it, that took the technology orders of magnitude further along. Curiously, however, their technology, which was called wing warping, had been tried years earlier by a physics professor at Yale named Edson Galadet, and he did it as a glider, no motor, and he used this wing warping technology,

and he went back and he told all his fellow professors at Yale what he had done, and they said, oh, Edson, there's no future in it, forget it. And he did for many years, and then he went back into aviation later. So even this great insight of wing warping, of changing the angle of the wing tips to the air had been tried before, but the Wright brothers were the first people to put it all together.

were the first people to put it all together. I'm Cassie DePeckel, the host of Wondery's podcast Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who lived to tell the tale. In our newest season, we go back to October 19, 1984, when a small plane carrying 10 people

crashes in the frigid wilderness of northern Alberta, Canada. Four men survive, a pilot, a politician, a cop, and an imprisoned man. While the survivors fight to stay alive, rescuers battle brutal weather in a desperate race to save them before it's too late. And in this week's episode, I talk with Amazon Books editor Al Woodworth about her top recommendations for books about survival. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts and dive deeper into thrilling stories of resilience and survival with curated book recommendations from the Amazon Book editors

at www.amazon.com slash atobooks. He was hip hop's biggest mog mogul the man who redefined fame fortune and the music industry. Did he built an empire and live the life most people only dream about everybody no no party like a did he party so. life most people only dream about. Everybody know a no party like a did he party so. But just as quickly as his empire rose it came crashing

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it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime this is the rise and fall of getting listen to the rise and fall of getting exclusively with wondering plus. Listen to the Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Once the problem of flight had more or less been solved, there were other firsts to follow. Longest flight, fastest flight, most loops around fairgrounds. One of these new feats was to fly across the English Channel. Can you share the story of the person who did that and how it went? Flying across the English Channel was considered like

climbing Mount Everest. And in 1909, prize money was put up for the first aviator who could fly across the channel. You know, they were flying actually longer distances than across the channel, but the channel was dangerous, the winds were difficult, the water was difficult if you happened to crash, which somebody did, and this attracted any number of innovators and Louis Blériot was the one who actually ended up winning. He was a French engineer and he had invented an acetylene lamp to use in automobiles and made quite a bit of money. And Blériot and a couple of other competitors were going to try to do this.

And a couple of them were in right flyers. And the right technology had its problems, although Blario's using it. And in a monoplane, one wing rather than two, he woke up early one morning, his foot was so burned he had to be helped into his airplane because he had burned it in a previous trial, and got up at 5.30 in the morning. There was one other competitor whose airplane still had not crashed and was

ready to go, but his seconds forgot to wake him up. So Blario took off on his own through the fog, flew across the English Channel, landed on the other side and became a worldwide celebrity. And Latham, the other flyer, Blairio in an incredible move of sportsmanship, said he would split the prize if Latham followed along. But unfortunately, right after Blairio landed, the weather got really bad and Latham could never do it. So Blairio became the first man

to fly across the English Channel in 1909. 1909 being the most important year of early flight. So why do you say 1909 was the most important year in flight? What did it mean for the Wright brothers? What's important to recognize about the Wright brothers is that after they flew in December of 1903, they did not fly publicly again for at least five years because what they were interested in was getting a patent and having that patent control every other airplane that was built

and getting very hefty royalties as a result. As a result of Blario's flight, it became clear to the Wright brothers that they couldn't sit and wait forever because everyone was catching up. In 1909, Blériot flew across English Channel. They had the first incredible air show in Reims, France. And the progress of aviation between 1909 and 19, say 1912, in terms of speed, height, control, stunts was absolutely phenomenal.

Whereas the progress in flight from when the Wright brothers flew in December of 1903 to the beginning of 1909, it was very slow. There were not that many innovations that worked. I'd love to hear about the world's very first air show. This must've been a very exciting spectacle. It was, they did it in Reims, which is now spelled R-E-I-M-S,

but then was R-H-E-I-M-S, which is where they used to crown French kings. It's east of Paris. And they anticipated, say, 20,000 people coming and it was mobbed. They built a train track to take spectators out there. Aviators from all over the world were there. Blériot was there. And the Wright brothers declined to participate because, A, they thought it was beneath them and B, they thought everybody there was infringing their patent, which is another story.

Now remember, in September 1909, most people in the world believed that flight was impossible and they had read about it. It was an incredible phenomenon. So seeing one airplane in the sky would just be jaw-dropping. Well, there were times that there were 15, 20 airplanes in the sky at the same time flying around the cathedral. They had events. A man named Gordon Bennett, who was a newspaper air, put up money for the Gordon Bennett Cup, which he had first started with yachting. And that was won with incredible speed by another American, Glenn Curtis,

who is very, very much a part of this story. One other thing, among the dignitaries was Edith Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's wife, and their young son Quentin, who was Roosevelt's favorite. And Quentin was later to die in an airplane in World War I. You mentioned Curtis's role in this story. I wonder if you could give us a synopsis of his contributions.

Curtis was, at least to me, the most important figure in early flight. The problem with the Wright brothers was that because they were so focused on their patent and so focused on making money, which is ironic because they weren't big livers, it was a matter of pride for them, that they stopped innovating. Curtis developed ailerons, which we still use today. Curtis developed landing gear, which we still use today.

Curtis figured out how to land an airplane on the deck of a ship with the same technology that we use today. An aileron means little wing. It's what you see when you're riding on an airplane and you see these little flaps come out of the wing and one goes up and one goes down and that's how they steer. So on a biplane, Curtis mounted these two small wings between the top and bottom airfoil and with a lever with control, one goes up and one goes down, which is the same effect as wing warping, except you can use metal and they can be attached in any variety of ways, and they could

be used in monoplanes much more easily than the Wright Brothers system. If you look at the list of innovations from Glenn Curtis that moved aviation forward, it would be more than a page. If you looked at a list of the Wright Brothers innovations, it would be three lines. But the world of early flight did not all belong to men. Women flew, too. Can you tell us about a pilot named Harriet Quimby? But the world of early flight did not all belong to men. Women flew too. Can you tell us about a pilot named Harriet Quimby? Harriet Quimby was a remarkable woman. She was born in, I think, in 1875,

but she always put her date of birth 10 years later and nobody noticed. She was strikingly beautiful. Started out as an actress, became a feature writer in Leslie's magazine writing about things such as Chinese princesses and Sarah Bernhardt, moved to New York, started racing automobiles, and was sent out to one of the air shows by Leslie's magazine and became so fascinated with flight that she went to John Moisson, who was also flying and had set up a flying school, and she became license number 37, the first woman to be a licensed pilot. And she was a showwoman.

She had a purple flying suit that turned into a regular outfit. She flew across the English Channel. She was an incredible figure which drew other women in. She wasn't the first woman to fly, but she was the first woman to get a license. And she tragically died in 1912 in an air crash. And that was a huge, huge lost aviation. Speaking of her death, this is a very dangerous occupation at the time. What were the safety innovations that were coming about? Well, there weren't many of them.

Just to give you a sense of how dangerous, in the first four years of flight, an aviator died on the average of every 10 days. You're starting out, remember, this is a frame. This is not an enclosed machine. There was a frame, the wings were framed, people were exposed to the elements. They would stuff newspapers in their clothes to keep warm, wear cork vests in case they fell into the water.

But one incredible lack was seatbelts. It is incredible with this amazing spate of innovation going on that nobody thought to strap themselves in until about 1911, 1912. And Harriet Quimby, she died because her plane went into a dive and she was ejected an air show. And they didn't think for a long time to find ways to keep them in the airplane. Glenn Curtis had a famous flight from Albany to Governor's Island to win another large prize and when he got over, there's a part of the Hudson River that you fly down where it gets very narrow

and the air currents just are very unpredictable. And it was like being on a Bronco. Curtis was barely able to stay in the airplane. But even Curtis, the great innovator, he didn't go and say, okay, now we need seat belts. Eventually by 1911, 1912, they started to become standard. It was Glenn Curtis' success in showmanship that got Wilbur and Orville to realize that they should get in on these exhibitions and promote themselves a little more.

So they created a team to rival Glenn Curtis' flight team. Some serious competition ensued. How did these two teams compete against one another? Well, the Wright brothers didn't do it because they thought it was a good idea. They did it because they felt forced to. What happened after 1909, one of the other things that happened, was that because of the advances, flyers could start to do tricks. They could do twists. They could do rolls in the air.

And people would just want to see this. It was something that was thought impossible. And Curtis's flyers started performing all of these tricks, and they would have dedicated air shows. And Curtis was very good about it. He let the flyers keep half of all the money that was paid. The Wright brothers decided they've got to do this because the public was kind of moving away from them. They were wondering how good their airplanes was.

This was the way to prove how good your airplane was. And so they started a team and they were getting a thousand dollars a day per flyer. And the flyers, out of that $1,000, got $50. Orville and Wilbur kept the rest. They had two particularly noteworthy flyers, Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxie, who was known as the Stardust Twins, because they kept trying to outdo each other in altitude records. And both of them died trying to do that. Another noteworthy flyer is Lincoln Beachy. He flew for Curtiss airplanes. Tell us about this guy.

Well, Beachy started flying for Curtiss and then flew Curtiss airplanes on his own. Lincoln Beachy, with all apologies to Chuck Yeager, is almost certainly the greatest flyer who ever lived. He did things that were thought impossible and nobody would have believed it except he was attracting sometimes hundreds of thousands, twice a half a million people to watch him fly. By the time Beachy was done, 20 million people had seen him fly when almost no one had ever seen the President of the United States.

He had a signature trick called the dip of death, where he would essentially aim the airplane straight down or almost to the vertical until it seemed almost impossible that he could pull it out. But he did pull it out just before it hit the ground under total control, landed it smoothly. He was fearless. He had started out with balloons. He started out in motorcycles like everyone else did. He was just a flying genius.

And he could promote himself. Just to give you an example, in 1911 at the air show in Chicago, again, half a million people, the show is technically over, but he is going to go for the altitude record, which is 11,200 feet. And he's in a Curtis airplane. So he goes out over Lake Michigan and Chicago is not called the Windy City for nothing. And what he realized was the only way he was going to set the altitude record was to use all his fuel on the way up. On the way down, he would do what is now called dead sticking. They called it vol planing.

In other words, he had to come down from more than 11,000 feet with no propeller, with no power, no motor. So he goes up. The megaphone man comes and announces it, he gets in the airplane, he goes up in big circles until he's this tiny little speck in the sky. And then the speck starts coming down, more circles, and when it gets bigger everyone can see that the propeller was not moving. Now this is an unbelievably difficult thing to do, deadsticking. And he ended up landing not 200 feet from where he took off. And when it was written up in the

journals, it was dealt with as the most incredible feat of flying ever and was predicted that it would last. Of course, people got better as time went on. What happened to Lincoln Beachy? Lincoln Beachy, the dip of death, which was his signature move, at least 24 other flyers died trying to do it. In 1915, he is going to do the dip of death over San Francisco Bay. But instead of his usual biplane, he had designed a monoplane one way. That was fine. But in order to make it light and maneuverable, he used the new miracle metal, aluminum. Now aluminum is incredibly strong, but it folds easily. The metallurgy was not all that well known. So Beachy goes over, starts

heading down, and the wings kind of fold up, collapse. And he goes into the bay and they sent down divers. Everyone just assumed he would have been killed on contact. When his body was recovered, they realized he had only broken his leg in the crash and that he couldn't get out because all the wires had come across him and the greatest aviator who ever lived died of drowning. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Raden was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Hello, it's Dan Harris from the 10% Happier Podcast. Is the whole new year, new you thing getting a little overwhelming?

Wondery's New Year New Mindset collection has the essentials to help you have your best year yet and to do it simply and sanely. From 10% happier and daily stoic for personal growth to unruffled for parenting wisdom, we've got you covered. Boost your creativity with the best idea yet. Get inspired by Baby, This is Kiki Palmer or dive deep with armchair expert. Listen to New Year New Mindset right now on the Wondery app. Part of the reason why the Wright brothers came late to the idea of public exhibitions

was because they wanted to make sure they got their patent first. And you mentioned this was part of the story. They wanted something called a pioneer patent. What is that? And why did they want it? Pioneer patent exists nowhere in the law. In 1898, there was a Supreme Court case, Westinghouse versus Boyden power break. And the notion was, and the decision was written by Henry Billings Brown, who two years before had written the infamous Plessy versus Ferguson separate but equal decision. In Westinghouse and Boyden Power Break, Brown wrote, if someone invents something and develops a groundbreaking new technology that is so far and ahead of anything that existed before

that they can patent not only that specific application of the technology, but their patent would cover everything that came afterwards. The Wright brothers, after they flew, applied for the patent with the idea of getting a pioneer patent. Now, because the patent office was notorious for kicking things back and taking forever, their patent lawyer said, don't apply for a flying machine. Don't put a motor on it. Just apply for a patent for the way the airplane is controlled. And the way they had done it was wing warping, but while the wings warped,

went in opposite directions, the rudder automatically followed along. And so the patent was for a soaring device. And this pioneer patent, when they finally got it, which I think was 1906 or 1907, they said every bit of technology that followed, ailerons, anybody else's technology, would infringe their patent. And they tried to collect exorbitant amounts of money from anybody else flying. They sued to stop air shows. This is a side of the Wright brothers that most people don't talk about a whole lot. but they, in addition to not innovating further on their own, were basically going to stop anyone else from innovating too. This notion of the pioneer patent, which by the way is still in the law, it's not used very much anymore,

but Westinghouse was never specifically overruled by the Supreme Court. So you had this situation where the Wright brothers said, okay, we did this, and even though it was a technological dead end, they said anybody who comes after us has to pay us. And people resisted. They applied for the patent in Germany and in France and couldn't get it. But they ultimately did get it here, but the case wasn't finally decided until 1914, after Wilbur had died. One of the obvious early customers for aviation technology is the military. What were they looking to do with airplanes beyond the obvious,

and what were early military exhibitions like? Well, nobody really thought of them as weapons at first. They thought of them as messengers, as scout. But of course, the notion that you could have something in the sky because balloons had been used for observation before was very appealing. But what they needed for the military was you needed distance, you needed power, you needed altitude so the people on the ground with rifles couldn't shoot you down. the people on the ground with rifles couldn't shoot you down. And dropping bombs came first, and then after the invention of the Lewis gun, then mounting a gun on an airplane.

Although in World War I, they had the guy in the back with a rifle. But military was very slow to come to it. They didn't want to buy it. They thought it was a toy. They just didn't get the technology and see the possibilities until flying had become a much, much more mature occupation, which again is from 1909 on. The military exhibitions were actually tame by the standards of the civilian exhibitions because what the military wanted to see was that the plant could take off, it could be

controlled, it could get high enough, fast enough, far enough. Now, the Wright brothers themselves may not have seen the possibilities of military use of their aircraft. They did not do especially well with defense at first. They were asking too much money and they refused to exhibit their airplane. They went to France, they went to Germany, they went to the UK here, and they said, we've got this great invention, you should buy it for 20, $25,000, $100,000. And they would go, sure, let's see it. And they go, no, no, we can't show you.

And it's kind of difficult to make a sale of a new product when you're asking everyone to take your word for it and refuse to show them what it can do. Once they started demonstrating it, then the military was, wow, this is great. And then they did want them. As I listen to you, I'm struck by how often the Wright brothers are reluctant. In contrast, someone like Glenn Curtis seems to be the greater pioneer. How would you describe the difference in vision between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtis? The Wright brothers were fascinating, complex, but ultimately tragic figures.

Their focus, almost from the day they flew at Kitty Hawk in December 17, 1903, their sole focus was business and profit. They specifically stopped innovating. They did not fly publicly, as I said. Whereas Curtis, he couldn't wait to do everything publicly. If he got an idea, he just ran with it. He figured out, as I said, how to land an airplane on the deck of a ship. He figured out how to land the airplane in the water. He's the father of naval aviation. He came out to near where I live in the water. He's the father of naval aviation. He came out to near where I live in San Diego to get away from the patent suits and became

the pioneer for airplanes that would take off from ships that would land on the water. Hydroplanes were a very, very big deal because you didn't always have airfields. And Curtis wanted to make money. He wasn't altruistic, but he recognized that every new innovation would move his idea, his product, and ultimately his profitability forward, where the Wrights just for some reason stopped dead. If Glenn Curtis moved to San Diego to escape the patent suits, I wonder what the result was for the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers started suing everyone in 1909.

The day Curtis won the Gordon Bennett Cup at Ronce in 1909, the Wright brothers' lawyers served his wife in Hammondsport, New York with an injunction and they started the lawsuits. The Wright brothers tried to get injunctions to stop air shows. They tried to get injunctions to stop foreign flyers from coming to the country. They went from heroes to pariahs. By the time Wilbur died in May of 1912, the Wright brothers were largely loathed in the aviation community. If the Wright brothers wanted to stop air shows, stop foreign flyers, stop innovation in aviation, one thing they could not stop was World War I. How did that conflict change aviation?

Wilbur died in 1912. People think of the Wright brothers as kind of interchangeable. They weren't. Wilbur was brilliant, one of the great intuitive scientists this country has ever produced. Orville was a great craftsman, but they were both dure, essentially pretty humorless guys. By the time World War I started in 1914, Orville was running the right company and he didn't really have his heart in it. You can read all the newspaper accounts. Remember, they had just won their patent suit after five years and the government had this system of cross-patenting where basically patents went out the window so you could create better airplanes for the war. But by that time time American aviation, because of the Patton Wars, had fallen so

far behind European aviation that there was not a single American airplane, including Curtis's, that was capable of fighting. He had a trainer, but that was about it. So World War I, as wars tend to do, goose the technology further, but American aviation had fallen way behind. Now, they caught up again in the 20s and 30s, but for the moment, the Patton Wars destroyed America's chances of having a competitive airplane in the war. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for joining me today

on American History Tellers. Thank you, Lindsay. It's been a pleasure to be here. I love talking about this. That was my conversation with historian Lawrence Goldstone. His book Birdman, The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, and The Battle to Control the Skies is available now. From Wondery, this is the fourth and final episode of our series on the Wright Brothers for American History Tellers. In our next season, in 1847, the world watches in horror as a relentless potato blight devastates Ireland. While British politicians refuse to provide sufficient aid, Americans collect food to relieve the starving people of Ireland, and a determined ship captain sets out on a mission

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Thompson. This episode was produced by Polystryker and Alita Rozanski. Our senior interview producer is Peter R. Kuhnig. Managing producer producer Desi Blaylock, senior managing producer Kaelin Pluse, senior producer Andy Herman, executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Marsha Louis, and Erin O'Flaherty for Wondering. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle.

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