NO. 5 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND WRIGHT BROTHERS 3 



Object Of exalting Langley at the expense of himself and his 

 brother as follows : 



1 By predominant mention of the achievements of 

 Langley in the addresses at the time of the first presenta- 

 tion of the Langley medal. 



2 By a misleading account of the exercises of Febru- 

 ary lo, 1910, printed in the Smithsonian Annual Report 



""^'^iTv what he regarded as the lack of cordiality in an 

 invitation by Secretary Walcott in April, 1910, to the 

 Wright brothers to deposit the Kitty Hawk or othei 

 planes in the U. S. National Museum. 



4 By the contract, in 1914, for experiments with the 

 Langley machine made with Mr. Glenn Curtiss at that 

 time a defendant in a patent suit brought by the Wright 



brothers. . n r ^u 



5 By claims of priority in capacity to hy, ±or tne 

 Langley machine, based on the experiments of 1914, and 

 repeated in Smithsonian publications as well as on labels 

 in the National Museum. _ 



6. By failure to recognize properly the abilities of the 

 Wrights as research men. 



I propose to take up these points seriatim: • 

 1 Mr Wright's feeling that predominant mention of the 

 achievements of Langley was made at the presenta- 

 tion of Langley medals to him and his brother. 



The main address on February 10, 1910,^ was by the late 

 Dr Alexander Graham Bell, a friend of Langley, a close 

 observer of his experiments for a period of ten years, and a 

 Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. The occasion was 

 the first award of a gold medal bearing Langley's name 

 which had been established at the suggestion of Dr. Bell 

 to perpetuate Langley's place in aeronautics. Responding 

 to a feeling then prevalent that Langley, on account of the 



^ See Smith^^n Annual Report, 1910, PP- 104-108. 



