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Orville Wright Fantastic Early Aviation Letter "...concerning our experiments...we were much amused at the accounts of the way our machine was guarded by rifles and shotguns..."
Orville Wright Fantastic Early Aviation Letter "...concerning our experiments...we were much amused at the accounts of the way our machine was guarded by rifles and shotguns..."
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Description:

Wright Orville

Orville Wright Fantastic Early Aviation Letter "...concerning our experiments...we were much amused at the accounts of the way our machine was guarded by rifles and shotguns..."

 

“The great mystery surrounding our work has been mostly created by the newspapers.”

 

“As a sport, I think flying is far superior [to automobiles.”

 

Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, June 8, 1908, Dayton, Ohio. 2 pp., 8.5" x 11," usual folds, very good.

 

Complete Transcript

Wright Brothers

1127 W. Third Street

Dayton, Ohio

                                                                                   June 8, 1908

Mr. Arthur Ruhl,

Collier’s Weekly, / New York.

Dear Mr. Ruhl:

            Your letters of May 29 and June 1st were duly received. I thought your account of the manoeuvrings of the newspaper men at Kill Devill Hills the most interesting thing I have ever seen concernin[g our experiments. The description of the physical conditions of the place were very realistic.

            We were aware of the newspaper men in the woods. At least, we had often been told that they were there. We would have had no objection to their coming over to camp, only that we didn’t want any accurate, or rather detail, descriptions given of the machine. We were much amused at the accounts of the way our machine was guarded with rifles and shot-guns.

            As you suspected, the matter published by the Herald was simply taken from two recent French patents. They failed to get hold of one taken out several years ago in American and Europe. I have never been able to discover exactly what is the “secret” of which the newspapers so often talk. The great mystery surrounding our work has been mostly created by the newspapers. They have told so many contradictory stories, that people are inclined to doubt all of them. <2>

            In regard to the matter of a flying machine for Mr. Collier, I am not able to make any very definite statements at present—that is as to price and time of delivery. We will have to dispose of the business we already have before we can undertake any other. This will take all the machines we have on hand at the present time. We expect to be through with these contracts in about four months. If Mr. Collier is then interested, we would be glad to furnish him a machine. I do not think he would have any more trouble in learning to operate it than he had in learning the automobile. As a sport, I think flying is far superior.

                                                                        Very truly yours,

                                                                        Orville Wright.

In his May 29 letter, Ruhl wrote “The drawings and descriptions of the machine in the Herald this morning, naturally make us regret that we should not have been the first to make such an announcement—the very thing that we wanted to do when I came out to Dayton last year. As near as I can gather, however, the Herald obtained its ‘story’ not from you but from the French Patent Office. Should you at any time contemplate making a further announcement, I hope that you will remember Collier’s.” That morning, the New York Herald published a photograph of the Wright Brothers’ “aeroplane in flight at Kill Devil Hill, N.C.,” drawings from the French Patent Office of the Wright Brothers plane, and photographs of Orville and Wilbur Wright over a story entitled, “The Herald Reveals the Mystery of the Airship and Tells Why It Flies.” The piece begins dramatically, “The Herald to-day lays bare to the world the hitherto well kept secret of the mechanical constructions that made possible the successful aerial flights of Orville and Wilbur Wright—a secret destined perhaps to prove as potentially vital in the history of civilization as was that of Watt’s first steam engine or of Fulton’s elementary steamboat.”

 

In the May 30, 1908, issue of Collier’s, which was released earlier, Arthur Ruhl published a humorous account of the presence of journalists at the Wright Brothers’ test flights at Kill Devil Hills on the coast of North Carolina. He began, “From their ambush in the scrub timber the attacking party gazed out across a mile of level beach tufted with marsh grass to a long shed which, at that distance, looked like a pine box set on the sand.”

 

In his June 1 letter, Ruhl asked whether the Wrights had considered the “manufacture of aeroplanes for private individuals.” His employer, Robert J. Collier (1876-1918), wanted to purchase one. Collier, Ruhl continued, “is greatly interested in this subject and soon as it is possible for the ‘layman’ to fly experimentally, he wants to do so. He has had no special experience in aerial navigation further than having gone up in a balloon, but has automobiles and motor boats and plenty of sporting spirit.” Ruhl inquires about when the Wrights could provide Collier with an airplane and how much it would cost. Ruhl concludes with a humorous reference to the dangers of air travel at the time, “As an interested observer of the success of this paper, I shall join with others in keeping him on the ground as long as possible, but as an obedient member of the staff, I am writing for this information at his request.”

 

Collier graduated from Georgetown University in 1894 and spent two years of further study at Harvard University and Oxford University. He then assumed the role of editor and publisher of Collier’s Weekly. As an aviation enthusiast, Collier served as a director of the Wright Company and purchased a Wright Model B airplane in 1911. He loaned it to the U.S. Army, which used it to fly along the Rio Grande River border of Mexico in one of the first scouting duties of an airplane for the Army. The pilots crashed into the Rio Grande but avoided drowning, and the plane was repaired and taken to Panama to film the construction of the Panama Canal. In 1913, Collier commissioned the construction of a seaplane to attempt to cross the Atlantic, a feat not accomplished until 1919.

 

 

Orville Wright (1871-1948) was born in Dayton, Ohio, four years younger than his brother Wilbur (1867-1912). He dropped out of high school after his junior year to start a printing business in 1889. He designed and built, with his brother’s help, a printing press, and they started their own weekly newspaper, which they converted to a daily in 1890, but it lasted only four months. In 1892, they opened their own bicycle sales and repair shop and by 1896 began manufacturing their own brand of bicycle. They began their own aeronautical research and experimentation in 1899. They eventually discovered wing-warping as a means of turning an airplane. In 1900, they first went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to experiment with gliders. They continued to experiment with wing and rudder design over the next three years with gliders, and first achieved powered flight in December 1903. Although their 1903 patent application was rejected, an Ohio patent attorney assisted them with a successful application for a patent for controlling a flying machine, issued in May 1906. They continued their experiments at Huffman Prairie near Dayton in Ohio for the next several years, keeping their designs secret to avoid theft by competitors. By 1908, they had contracts from the U.S. Army and a French company to built aircraft. Injured in a demonstration flight for the U.S. Army that killed a passenger, Orville Wright spent seven weeks in the hospital recovering from multiple broken bones. In 1909, they formed the Wright Company. After Wilbur’s death in 1912 of typhoid fever, Orville became the company’s president, but he sold it in 1915. He made his last flight as a pilot in 1918 and spent the next three decades serving with various aviation organizations.

 

Arthur Brown Ruhl (1876-1935) was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Harvard University in 1899. While at Harvard, he wrote for The Advocate and Lampoon, and ran on the track team. After he graduated, the New York Evening Sun employed him as a reporter, and he was soon published in Century Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly.  He traveled widely and wrote on a wide variety of topics, from sports to theatre to politics. He wrote about Latin-American affairs and was an authority on international relations. He wrote about a Mexican revolution, a volcano erupting in South America, the German and Turkish lines at Gallipoli, the world heavyweight boxing match in Reno, theatres in Moscow, a George Gershwin concert, the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight, and many other topics. He died in Queens from pneumonia, contracted ten days earlier. He married Zinaida Yakovnchikoff (1904-1952), who was born in Russia and spoke German, in 1926, in Berlin, Germany. They had one son Arthur Paul Ruhl (1929-1997).

 

 

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