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Orville Wright Important Early Aviation Letter Refusing Journalist's Request for a Flight as a Passenger
Orville Wright Important Early Aviation Letter Refusing Journalist's Request for a Flight as a Passenger
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Wright Orville

Orville Wright Important Early Aviation Letter Refusing Journalist’s Request for a Flight as a Passenger

 

“if we take one passenger we will be besieged with requests from people whom it will be almost impossible to refuse.”

 

Typed Letter Signed and Initialed, to Arthur Ruhl, May 26, 1909, Dayton, Ohio.  1 p., 8.5" x 11," usual folds, very good.

 

Complete Transcript

Wright Brothers

1127 W. Third Street

Dayton, Ohio

                                                                                  May 26, 1909.

Mr. Arthur Ruhl,

New York City.

Dear Mr. Ruhl;

            Your letter of May 13th was received. We are very busy and, as usual, our correspondence has been neglected. We were sorry to miss you in New York and must apologize for not sending you word that we could not be in when you said you would call. It would have given us both pleasure to see you.

            We shall not be able to make any more flights before we go to Washington, and when we once get to work there we shall have to devote every flight to teaching our pupils. Besides if we take one passenger we will be besieged with requests from people whom it will be almost impossible to refuse. You will readily see how much embarrassment it will make us if we begin to take passengers. It would give us pleasure to take you for a little spin, in recompense for the suffering you endured, on “the firing line” but we do not see how we can do it. We shall be glad to see you in Washington if you find it convenient to be there while we are at work on our government contract.

                                                                        Very truly yours

                                                                        Wright Brothers

                                                                               O.W.

 

Historical Background

Journalist Arthur Ruhl, who was a regular contributor to Collier’s Weekly national newspaper, published in New York, had made friends with pioneer aviators Orville and Wilbur Wright through visits to Ohio, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Ruhl had written admiringly of the Wright brothers’ accomplishments for Collier’s Weekly.

 

In the late summer and fall of 1908, Wilbur Wright traveled to France to pilot public demonstrations of their airplane. In flights beginning on August 8, 1908, Wilbur amazed spectators with his ability to make turns and fly in circles. Although his first flight lasted less than two minutes, he made longer and more challenging flights over the next several days and took a succession of passengers on flights as well.

 

Meanwhile, Orville Wright was at Fort Myer, Virginia, demonstrating their airplane to the United States Army, beginning on September 3. Six days later, Orville completed the first hour-long flight. On September 17, he took twenty-six-year-old Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge along as a passenger and official observer. A few minutes into the flight, at an altitude of one hundred feet, a propeller shattered and sent the airplane out of control. In the crash, Selfridge suffered a fractured skull and died that evening in an Army hospital. He was the first passenger and the first active-duty member of the military killed in a plane crash. Orville Wright suffered a broken leg, four broken ribs, three hip fractures, and a dislocated hip, which troubled him for years. The Wrights’ sister Katherine, a school teacher, arrived from Ohio and remained with Orville for the seven weeks of his hospitalization. Katherine Wright also negotiated a one-year extension to the Army contract.

 

In January 1909, Orville and Katharine Wright joined Wilbur Wright in France. They returned from Europe in May, and on June 10, 1909, President William Howard Taft hosted the Wrights at the White House and presented them with Aero Club of America gold medals. After celebrations of their accomplishments in Dayton on June 17-18, the Wrights returned to Washington to complete the proving flights for the U.S. Army that Orville had begun before his accident. On July 29, President Taft and Congressional leaders witnessed one of the Wright brothers’ flights at Fort Myer.

 

The army had required a two-seater airplane capable of flying a passenger for an hour at an average speed of 40 miles per hour and landing undamaged. The Wrights sold the airplane to the U.S. Army’s Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Signal Corps for $30,000 (including a $5,000 bonus for exceeding the speed specification).

 

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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