Two bicycle makers and a million dollars

By 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright were the most famous men in aviation. Wilbur had stunned French sceptics at Le Mans in August 1908, Orville had flown for more than an hour at Fort Myer, and the US Army had accepted their Military Flyer as Signal Corps No. 1. Money followed fame. On 22 November 1909 a group of New York and Detroit investors including Cornelius Vanderbilt, Theodore Shonts, Allan Ryan and Morton Plant put up $1,000,000 and incorporated the Wright Company. The brothers sold it their patent for $100,000 in cash, a block of shares and a 10 per cent royalty on every aeroplane sold.

The first aircraft factory in America

Wilbur became president and Orville vice-president. The offices were in New York, but the work was done in Dayton, where two buildings went up in 1910 and 1911 that were the first in the United States designed specifically as an aircraft factory. A flying school opened at Huffman Prairie, the cow pasture where the brothers had learned to circle in 1904 and 1905. Its first new type, the Model B of 1910, moved the elevator to the tail and added wheels. It became the only Wright design built in double figures, about 100 in all, most of them by Burgess, which held the first aircraft licence granted in America.

Daredevils and silk

To sell aeroplanes, the company first had to show them off. In 1910 it formed the Wright Exhibition Team, managed by the balloonist Roy Knabenshue, whose pilots earned $20 a week and $50 a day when flying. By August five teams were touring at once and had taken $186,000. The cost was high: Ralph Johnstone was killed at Denver in November 1910 and Arch Hoxsey at Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, and the Wrights disbanded the team in November 1911. In between, on 7 November 1910, Phil Parmelee flew two bolts of silk from Dayton to Columbus, the first known commercial air cargo, for a $5,000 fee.

The patent war

The company’s real energy went into court. The 1906 patent covered any means of twisting the wings for lateral control, and the courts held that it included ailerons. The Wright Company sued Glenn Curtiss, the French flier Louis Paulhan and others, and in the end won every case in American courts. Wilbur saw it as a moral cause, writing to Octave Chanute in 1910 that the world owed its system of lateral control entirely to the brothers. The price was paid in design. The company held back innovation to protect its royalties, and by 1911 Wright aeroplanes were considered inferior to the best European machines.

Wilbur’s death and the Model C crashes

Wilbur exhausted himself travelling to lawyers and courtrooms. He fell ill on a business trip to Boston in April 1912 and died of typhoid fever in Dayton on 30 May, aged 45. Orville took over. A week after Wilbur’s funeral, on 11 June 1912, the company’s chief instructor Arthur Welsh was killed with an Army officer while testing the new Model C scout. Of the eight Model Cs the Army accepted, six crashed between July 1913 and February 1914, most of them fatally. Factory manager Grover Loening blamed the design; Orville blamed the pilots. The Army grounded the survivors and soon retired all its pusher aircraft.

Orville sells out

Orville was a brilliant engineer and a reluctant businessman. He flew a Model E with an automatic stabiliser around Huffman Prairie on 31 December 1913 with his hands above his head, which brought the company the Collier Trophy. In 1914 he bought up 97 per cent of the shares, and the late designs broke with the old formula: the Model F had a fuselage, the Model G Aeroboat had the first T-tail fitted to an aircraft, and the Model K used ailerons and tractor propellers. On 15 October 1915 Orville sold the company to New York financiers. By his own estimate it had built about 120 aircraft.

From Wright-Martin to Curtiss-Wright

In September 1916 the new owners merged it with the first Glenn L. Martin Company to form Wright-Martin. The last aircraft built under the old name, the Model L reconnaissance prototype, looked like no Wright design before it. Wright-Martin pressed the patent war harder still, demanding a 5 per cent royalty on every aircraft, until in 1917 the government forced the industry into a patent pool. Martin left, the firm became Wright Aeronautical in 1919 and turned to engines such as the Whirlwind, and in 1929 it merged with Curtiss to form Curtiss-Wright. The Dayton factory still stands, damaged by fire in 2023.

Fábricas

• Wright Company factory · Dayton, Ohio — Built 1910–1911; first US buildings designed as an aircraft factory; later used by Delco; on the National Register since 2019
• Huffman Prairie flying field and school · Huffman Prairie (Simms Station), near Dayton — Test field and flying school, 1910–1916
• Head office · New York City

Pessoas

• Wilbur Wright · co-founder and president — Led the patent fight; died of typhoid fever on 30 May 1912
• Orville Wright · co-founder, vice-president, president from 1912 — Sold the company in October 1915
• Frank Henry Russell · first factory manager
• Grover Loening · factory manager 1913–1914 — Designed the Model F and G; later founded his own company
• Roy Knabenshue · exhibition team manager — Also persuaded Wilbur not to burn the 1903 Flyer
• Arthur L. Welsh · chief instructor and test pilot — Killed testing the Model C, 11 June 1912
• Charlie Taylor · mechanic — Built the 1903 engine; led the Vin Fiz support crew
• Ida Holdgreve · head seamstress — Sewed wing and tail fabric at the Dayton factory

Recordes e pioneirismos

• First buildings in the United States constructed specifically as an aircraft factory, Dayton, 1910–1911
• First known commercial air cargo flight, Dayton to Columbus, 7 November 1910
• First aircraft licence production in the United States, the Burgess-built Model B
• First coast-to-coast flight across the United States, Cal Rodgers in the Model EX Vin Fiz, 17 September to 10 December 1911
• First T-tail fitted to an aircraft, Model G Aeroboat, 1913
• Collier Trophy for the automatic stabiliser demonstrated on the Model E