The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright by Crouch Tom D

Author:Crouch, Tom D. [Crouch, Tom D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2003-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

“There is absolutely no evidence to support the alleged statements of the Wright brothers,” Santos told the newsmen. “They may have flown, but there is nothing in any report of their proceedings that inspires confidence.”

chapter 24

WEALTH AND FAME

November 1906-November 1907

Milton Wright was too preoccupied with his own problems to pay much attention to Wilbur and Orville’s aeronautical experiments during the crucial years 1900–05. He seldom worried about the risks—they had promised to be careful, and his sons would keep their word.

By the fall of 1906, Will and Orv had temporarily put physical risk behind them. Yet Milton was concerned about the more subtle dangers his sons would encounter in the immediate future. He had no doubt that success would put their strength of character and sense of values to severe test. “There is much in the papers about the Wright brothers,” he noted in his diary on November 30. “They have fame, but not wealth, yet. Both these, though aspired after by so many, are vain.”1

The stream of visitors passing through Milton’s house had already altered the comfortable pattern of family life. Weaver, Coquelle, Fordyce, Hammer, the members of the French commission, Pat Alexander, Baldwin, and Curtiss—all had come and gone in the past year. Will and Orv had not yet flown in public, but they were already minor international celebrities and objects of curiosity.

Thanksgiving week, 1906, was a particularly busy time. It began on November 20 with a visit from an editor of Scientific American. Henry Weaver, whose testimony had thrown the French into such an uproar, arrived two days later with a visitor from Paris—Frank Lahm. They stayed for two days, locked in extended discussions with Will and Orv in the upstairs room at the bike shop.

Their most important guest, Ulysses D. Eddy, arrived in Dayton on Thanksgiving Day, and called at 7 Hawthorn the following morning. Unlike the others, Eddy had little direct interest in aeronautics. He was a professional dealmaker who had learned his trade from a master, Charles Ranlett Flint.

Little remembered today, Flint was well known to readers of turn-of-the-century newspapers as “the Rubber King” and “the Father of Trusts.” He had organized such giant combines as United States Rubber, the American Woolen Company, U.S. Bobbin and Shuttle, and American Chicle. The investment banking firm of Charles R. Flint & Company also profited from the sale of American arms and technology abroad—the company sold an entire fleet to Brazil, and purchased ships for Japan, Russia, and Chile. From time to time, Flint served as an overseas agent for American inventors. He had sold American electric automobiles in France and introduced Simon Lake’s submarine boat to the tradition-bound czarist navy.2

Until recently, Ulysses Eddy had worked as a Flint agent. Not long after he struck out on his own, Eddy noticed a news article on the Wrights that appeared at the time of Santos Dumont’s flight. Intrigued, and recognizing a golden opportunity for his old friends at Flint & Company, he caught the next train for Dayton.

Like everyone else, Eddy was impressed by the Wrights.

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