When I went out to Huffman Prairie I expected to see somebody’s neck broken. What I did see was a machine weighing 900 pounds soar away like an eagle. . . . I told a friend about it that night and he acted as if he thought I had gone daft or joined the liar’s club.
An American correspondent for a German aeronautical journal had come to Huffman Prairie and begun a series of articles on the brothers. The French were beginning to make inquiries.
Prodded by Octave Chanute to try one more time to rouse interest in Washington, on the chance that the new president of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, Major General J. C. Bates, might be of different mind, the brothers wrote again. Their earlier proposal appeared to have been given “scant consideration,” they said in their letter of October 9. “We do not wish to take this invention abroad, unless we find it necessary to do so, and therefore write again, renewing the offer.”
By this time the brothers were routinely making controlled flights in their aircraft of 25 miles or more. But the response from Washington, as Katharine wrote to the Bishop, was “the same thing that they had before.” The only difference was they were told that before any consideration of their machine, they must provide “such drawings and descriptions . . . as are necessary to enable construction,” something the Wrights refused to do.
They tried again, asking what requirements in performance were expected by the board, and were told the board did not care to formulate any requirements until a machine was produced and able to provide “horizontal flight and to carry an operator.”
A sampling of photographs of Flyer III in action could have been requested or a visit to Huffman Prairie by someone from Washington might well have resolved the issue. Told what the response of the board had been, Octave Chanute concluded, “Those fellows are a bunch of asses.”
Progress with the English having stalled, Wilbur informed an interested group in Paris that he and Orville were ready to discuss sale of the Flyer III to the French government.
In the last week of 1905, Bishop Wright recorded in his diary:
Thursday, December 28 The morning was beautiful, and a fire hardly needed. A Frenchman by the name of Arnold Fordyce came to investigate and drive a trade for a flying machine. They agreed on terms.
Fordyce represented a syndicate of wealthy French businessmen, but the Wrights assumed the deciding authority would be the French military, which was the case. The syndicate would purchase a Wright Flyer as a gift to the French government. According to the agreement the brothers were to receive one million francs, or $200,000, for one machine, on the condition that they provided demonstration flights, during which the machine fulfilled certain requirements in altitude, distance, and speed.
Details of the final terms were to be negotiated by a French commission assigned to come to Dayton. Meantime, a sum of 25,000 francs, or $5,000, was to be deposited in a New York bank in escrow. $200,000 was an exceedingly large sum and the $5,000 the brothers were to receive, however the further negotiations went, would more than cover all the expenses they had had since first going to Kitty Hawk.
Saturday, December 30 In the afternoon [wrote the Bishop in his diary], Wilbur and Orville sign up the contract with Mr. Arnold Fordyce, of Paris. . . .
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Capital Exhibit A
He inspires great confidence.
HART O. BERG
You people at home must stop worrying! There is no need of it.
WILBUR WRIGHT
I.
The four well-dressed French gentlemen and the American accompanying them were the subject of much talk almost from the moment, on March 20, 1906, when they walked into the lobby of the Beckel Hotel in Dayton to register at the front desk.
Word was out that the “Wright boys” had made arrangements to sell their flying machine to the French. But when a reporter for the Dayton Herald inquired of the head of the delegation, Arnold Fordyce, if this were so, his reply was they had come “merely to see the sights.” He was writing a book about the customs and industries of America, he said. Dayton was one of four cities on the tour. He did add, however, and most cordially, that they hoped to call on the Wright brothers while in town.
Arnold Fordyce had once been an actor. In truth the men had come with no other purpose than to meet with the Wrights. Three of the group, despite their business suits, were French army officers. Commandant Henri Bonel was chief of engineers of the French General Staff, the only one of the group who spoke no English and an acknowledged skeptic concerning the Wrights and their flying machine. Captains Henri Régnier and Jules Fournier were military attachés from the French embassy in Washington.