THE 1914 TESTS OF THE LANGLEY "AERODROME" ^ 



By C. G. abbot 

 Secretary, Smithsonian Institution 



Note — This paper has been submitted to Dr. Orville Wright, and under 

 date of October 8, 1942, he states that the paper as now prepared will be 

 acceptable to him if given adequate publication. 



It is everywhere acknowledged that the Wright brothers were the 

 first to make sustained flights in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty 

 Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. 



Mainly because of acts and statements of former officers of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, arising from tests made with the recon- 

 ditioned Langley plane of 1903 at Hammondsport, New York, in 

 1914, Dr. Orville Wright feels that the Institution adoped an unfair 

 and injurious attitude. He therefore sent the original Wright Kitty 

 Hawk plane to England in 1928. The nature of the acts and state- 

 ments referred to are as follows : 



In March 1914, Secretary Walcott contracted with Glenn H. Curtiss 

 to attempt a flight with the Langley machine. This action seems 

 ill considered and open to criticism. For in January 1914, the United 

 States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, had handed down a decision 

 recognizing the Wrights as "pioneers in the practical art of flying 

 with- heavier-than-air machines" and pronouncing Glenn H. Curtiss 

 an infringer of their patent. Hence, in view of probable further 

 litigation, the Wrights stood to lose in fame and revenue and Curtiss 

 stood to gain pecuniarily, should the experiments at Hammondsport 

 indicate that Langley's plane was capable of sustained flight in 1903, 

 previous to the successful flights made December 17, 1903, by the 

 Wrights at Kitty Hawk, N. C. 



The machine was shipped to Curtiss at Hammondsport, N. Y. in 

 April. Dr. Zahm, the Recorder of the Langley Aerodynamical 

 Laboratory and expert witness for Curtiss in the patent litigation, 

 was at Hammondsport as official representative of the Smithsonian 

 Institution during the time the machine was being reconstructed and 

 tested. In the reconstruction the machine was changed from what it 

 was in 1903 in a number of particulars as given in Dr. Wright's 



1 For an account of early Langley and Wright aeronautical investigations, 

 see Smithsonian Report for 1900 and The Century Magazine of September 1908. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 103, No. 8 



