Frank Coffyn was taught to fly by Orville for about an hour and a half, than by Walter Brookins for another hour and a half, becoming the 26^th pilot in America and was a member of the Wright Exhibition Team. His recollections of Orville and Wilbur provide an interesting look at their personalities.

Brookins was the first pilot taught to fly by Orville. The Wrights had known him since he was four years old. Katharine had him as a student in school.

When Frank first arrived in Dayton to begin his pilot training, he was surprised to find that many of the citizens of Dayton were only barely tolerant of the brothers. They thought that the Wright brothers’ activity with flying was a fad and wouldn’t last long.

Their attitude changed by the time Frank left Dayton. He observed that the citizens of Dayton began to wake up to the fact that these crazy Wrights must have something in them after all. They hadn’t crashed and killed themselves. They weren’t bankrupt. And strangest of all, they hadn’t become swell-headed.

Famous people from around the world were coming to Dayton to see the Wrights. Wilbur and Orville were not big on receiving visitors who they didn’t know. Katharine Wright would often greet the guests with her charming personality.

Frank noted that the Wrights were fond of his five-year-old son. Wilbur spent a lot of time making a kite for him. He was also was kind and considerate to his Frank’s wife.

Frank did many daring things during his flying career but the only time he almost died was in an automobile crash in New York City when the car he was riding in went over a bridge. He was unconscious for 10 days, having sustained a skull fracture. Some newspapers even published a report of his death.

Wilbur visited and sat at his bedside in the Presbyterian Hospital. Frank said that he discovered a new and tender side to Wilbur. Later, after recovery was certain, Wilbur wrote him a letter.

One newspaper reporter described the Wrights as uncompromising, Puritan mechanics. Frank commenting on the description, said that he agreed they were Puritans, "bred in the bone." "There never was a taint of hypocrisy about them. They held to what they believed to be a right course, and nothing could make them trim their sails."

The Wrights rejected flattery offered by many famous people. Had they lived in Europe, honors would have been heaped upon them.

The director of the Smithsonian Institution fraudulently claimed that the original failed Langley aeroplane had flown after restoration and then displayed it in the museum with an inscription that said it was the first aeroplane that was capable of flight.

The Smithsonian asked Orville to display the 1903 Flyer adjacent to the Langley plane. Orville was outraged. Instead he accepted an offer from the South Kensington Museum in London and sent the 1903 Flyer to London for display.

Frank, commenting on this sad episode, explained that Orville was uncompromising in his attitude because he would not be false to his dead brother’s memory and his pride of achievement by letting the Flyer rest side by side with the Langley machine. The Flyer remained in London for 20 years, not returning until 1948 after the then director of the Smithsonian published a retraction of the false claims.

Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley was an eminent scientist. "He had forgotten more mathematics," said Frank, "than the Wrights ever knew. But what about the results? The Wrights' plane flew; Langley’s plane did not."

"I have heard," said Frank, "the Wrights called parsimonious and niggardly. That is not correct. They had opportunities to make a great deal more money than they amassed, but in those early days the only returns were from exhibition flights. They were not selling machines, although there were a thousand ready purchasers. They could have made enormous sums of money by catering to these enthusiasts, but money as money did not seem to interest them."

Frank, commenting on the status of aviation in America in 1920, had this to say:

Reference: "Flying with the Wrights," by Frank T. Coffyn, World’s Work Magazine, Dec. 1929-Jan. 1930.

Orville told Frank that he was ready for his first solo flight after 2 ½ hours of flight training. It was not to be flown at Huffman Prairie, however, but during the Wright Exhibition team’s first show to be held in Indianapolis where the 500-mile automobile races are held.

One might think that this was a bit risky, but the Wrights believed in themselves, their airplanes and their students. Frank commenting on the situation said, "They didn’t fuss around and make one nervous; they assumed I would make good."

Frank nearly did fail. He took off on a nice June day and proceeded to follow the racetrack. The plan was to make straightforward laps around the track.

Before he completed his first lap he felt a violent pain in his left eye and both eyes began to tear profusely. Frank thought he was going blind and would crash. Although in pain and about to crash, his main worry was he was going to let the Wrights down.

By shaking his head he managed to see some, although it was like looking through a mist. It was enough to enable him to land without incident.

Wilbur ran over and asked him what was wrong. His voice was anxious, but not scolding. Frank answered it was his eyes while thinking his flying career was over.

He removed his goggles and to his surprise there was a spider on the left lens. The spider must have crawled inside while the goggles were hanging on the wall of the flying shed.

Frank went on to fly successfully every day of the exhibition, as did the other members of the team.

Orville had flown over 250 flights in 1910 training his students, 100 of the flights were in the last three weeks of May.

More to come on Frank Coffyn in future articles.

Reference: "Flying with the Wrights," by Frank T. Coffyn, World’s Work Magazine, Dec. 1929-Jan. 1930.

This poem appeared on the program for the 61^st anniversary of the first flight held at the Wright Brothers National Memorial on Thursday December 17, 1964.

Howerton Gowen of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, wrote it. Mr. Gowen owned an oil and chemical business for many years.

Mr. Thomas E. Myrick of Roanoke Rapids brought the poem to my attention.

The Kill Devil Memorial Hills Association, The National Park Service, The National Aeronautic Association and The Air Force Association sponsored the event in 1964.

The Kill Devil Hills Association was organized formally in 1927 to preserve and honor the original site of the Wright brothers’ flights of December 17, 1903.

In 1966, the association was rekindled as the First Flight Society. The society supports the Park Service including the annual ceremony honoring the Wright brothers held at the park on December 17^th.

Orville liked to play practical jokes. It started at an early age.

He stopped attending kindergarten after the first day of class. His mother did not suspect the truth because he continued to leave the house each morning at the appointed time for school and return on time. All the while, he was playing with his friend Ed Stine.

This charade went on for several weeks until his mother, Susan Wright, stopped by the school to see how Orville was doing. She home schooled him after that until the second grade.

In the second grade he won the teachers approval to move on to the third reader by taking a test. The test the teacher gave was to select a passage at random out of the second reader for Orville to read. Orville not only rapidly read the passage, but also did it with the book held upside down.

He was sent home from school in the sixth grade for some unreported mischief. His eighth-grade teacher sat him in the front row in order to keep a watchful eye on him.

As an adult, Orville continued his pranks. Nephews were often targets.

One of the nephews liked mashed potatoes. One Sunday Orville pasted a thread to the bottom of a nephew’s plate. At the appropriate time Orville commented that it seems funny how Bus’s plate always made for the mashed potatoes as Orville moved the plate towards the mashed potatoes he was serving.

He used the thread trick in other ways. One of the family was having lunch with Orville when a big cockroach ran from under his plate. It turned out to be a tin cockroach attached to a thread manipulated by Orville.

Dayton put on a grand celebration for the Wright Brothers in 1909. Orville and Wilbur rode in a carriage in the parade with Ed Sines, boyhood friend of Orville and Ed Ellis, friend of Wilbur. All along the route people reached out to the carriage to shake hands with the famous Wrights. As a practical joke Sines and Ellis did much of the handshaking as if they were the heroes.

One night an English writer friend of Orville’s was visiting at Hawthorn Hill. After dinner Brewer committed, "you know, I have often thought after you and your brother learned to fly, the problem that baffled men for centuries suddenly seemed most simple. You’d think anyone could have done it. There is a passage of poetry that expresses that very well. I have been trying to think of it for years. All I can remember is "…so easy it seemed once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible." There is more to it about invention. I wish I could find the whole passage. Do you know it?"

"No, I think not," answered Orville, "but I have an extensive collection of poetry in the library. Let’s look."

The two men spent several hours hunting for the lines, but the passage eluded them.

The very next morning one of the coincidences so common in life happened. A letter asking for Orville’s autograph arrived and in the letter the writer included the very quotation Brewer had asked about and gave the information that it came from Paradise Lost, Book VI. Orville took down his Milton and began to search. Finally at line 499 he came to the passage, which began

It concluded as Brewer had quoted.

Orville put the book back on the shelf, at the same time pulling the book directly above it out from the shelf a shade of an inch.

When dinner ended that night, Orville said, "I’d still like to find the passage of poetry we talked about last night. I have never told you before, but I am somewhat psychic."

"I thought I might try to locate the passage by using my psychic powers. I’ll blindfold myself, run my fingers along the books and perhaps my psychic genius will guide them to the book."

"Amazing," said Brewer. "Let’s try it."

After blindfolding himself, Orville ran his fingers along the shelves. At last his fingers stopped at one book and pulled out a volume. He took off the blindfold. "H’mmmm. Milton. Something tells me this is the book."

Brewer looked at the book. "Milton? I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like Milton to me."

"There must be a reason why my fingers were led to this book." Orville leafed through the pages long enough to make his act look good. Then he handed the volume to Brewer and pointed to the lines.

Brewer looked at Orville with astonishment showing on his face. Orville placed the book back on the shelf. He never did tell Brewer how his psychic powers worked.

References: Tom Crouch, Fred Kelley, and Rosamond Young

In 1928, Orville Wright sent the Flyer, the most important artifact of man’s successful attempt to fly, to the Science Museum in London, England. Neither Dayton, the hometown of the Wright Brothers, nor Orville (Wilbur died in 1912 at the age of 45), ever saw it again. The same could almost have been said about America. By the narrowest of circumstances, the Flyer returned to America in 1948.

The story begins as a simple rivalry between the Smithsonian Institution and the Wright Brothers, and their claims of who was the first to fly. The rivalry was to take on an ugly nature that included dishonesty and deception on the part of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian at the time was primarily a research facility rather than a museum and Dr. Langley was America’s most respected scientist.

Langley, like the Wrights, dreamed of flying. His big opportunity came in 1898 when the U.S. War Department awarded him $50,000 (an additional $20,000 came from other funds) to develop an experimental flying machine. It was the largest appropriation ever granted by the War Department.

In 1898, the U.S. was at war with Spain and the War department was interested in a man-carrying flying machine. The project had the support of President McKinley, and the assistant secretary of war, Theodore Roosevelt.

Langley not only had the money, but the resources, of the Smithsonian in his favor. Working on the project were seven machinists, three carpenters and an engineer by the name of Charles Manly.

Langley was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1834 and graduated from Boston High School in 1851. He decided not to attend college; instead he joined an architectural firm in order to get a "practical education" in engineering and architecture.

Later he became interested in and self educated in astronomy. That resulted in a series of progressively important jobs in astronomy.

In 1887, he accepted an offer to become the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Two years prior to his appointment he became interested in the possibility of manned flight after attending a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where the topic was discussed.

Soon after arriving at the Smithsonian, he pursued his interest further by establishing an aerodynamics laboratory. There, over a period of ten years, he experimented with nearly a hundred different model airplane configurations. He named these models "aerodromes" from the Greek words meaning, "air runner."

On May 6, 1896, one of his unmanned, steam-powered, heavier-than-air aerodromes flew under its own power for more than a half mile on a wide portion of the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and friend of Langley photographed this significant event. It was Langley’s greatest contribution to aviation.

On November 28, a larger model flew for two minutes for three-fourths of a mile. The scientific community now recognized Langley as the most prestigious aeronautical researcher and designer in the world.

The year 1896 was significant for another reason. It was the year that the famous Gustave Lilienthal died in a glider accident in Germany. Lilienthal’s death rekindled the Wrights’ interest in the riddle of man’s ability to fly.

Langley theorized that he could accomplish the terms of the War Department contract by scaling-up to full size his successful aerodromes. He called the new machine the "Great Aerodrome."

Langley hired Charles Manly, a new mechanical engineering graduate from Cornell University as his assistant. By 1901 Manly had designed the first radial gasoline engine in aeronautical history for the Great Aerodrome. It was a remarkable engine that produced 52.4 horsepower yet weighted only 124 pounds.

In June 1901, a quarter-scale, unmanned version of the Great Aerodrome successfully flew several straight-line flights. Langley still had not figured out how to steer, balance or land the machine although he did make a futile attempt by adding a Penaud tail that Manly (assigned as pilot) could operate by a wheel.

Time and money was in scarce supply so Langley decided to leave that task for later. For the present they would concentrate on achieving a successful straight-line flight of a few miles. Manly didn’t reveal how he felt about the sure prospect of a crash landing.

By 1903 both the Wright Brothers and Langley were rapidly closing in on their attempts to fly their manned airplanes.

The Great Aerodrome would be the first to make the attempt with Manly as the pilot. Langley designed the Great Aerodrome to be catapulted from the roof of a houseboat in the Potomac River.

The Dayton Daily News carried the following story:

"The house boat containing the flying machine is anchored off Quantico on the Potomac River about a half mile below Washington. Buoys have been placed in the river about two miles from the Virginia shore and a little north of Liverpool Point to mark the course that the aerial vessel shall take in its flight. That there is any doubt that the mapped out course can be followed is not for a moment admitted by the inventor, who is confident that the steering gear and shiftable propeller which he has designed will answer all requirements."

It was not to be. Twice, once on October 7 and once on December 8, the machine plunged into the Potomac River at launching. Charles Manly had to swim for his life both times and emerged drenched but unhurt. The last attempt was made barely nine days before the Wrights’ successful first flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.

After the failed attempts, the Washington Post pronounced the flying ability of the Aerodrome to be like "a handful of mortar." In fact the machine was aerodynamically and structurally unsound.

The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, questioned, "If it is to cost $73,000 to construct a mud duck that will fly 50 feet, how much is it going to cost to construct a real flying machine?"

Note: In today's dollars, the cost was about $1.5 million.

Representative Robinson of Indiana sarcastically commented: "Langley is a professor, wandering in his dreams, who is building castles in the air."

The War Department, after an official investigation, concluded: "We are still far from the ultimate goal, and it would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts, together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars, would be necessary before we can hope to produce an apparatus of practical utility on these lines."

Nine days later on December 17, the Wrights made the first successful powered flight with an airplane.

The War Department was oblivious to this memorial event. The embarrassment associated with Langley’s failure would blind the War Department from seeing the success of the Wright Brothers until 1908.

It was now clear that Langley was not destined to be the first human to fly. He did ask for additional money from the War Department, but was refused. Humiliated by the ridicule and his money exhausted, he never again pursued his aeronautical studies. He died of a second stroke three years later on November 22, 1905 at the age of seventy-one.

Alexander Graham Bell was one of the pallbearers. In his tribute to Langley, Bell said his flying machine never had an opportunity of being fairly tried. "Ridicule, I repeat, shortened his life."

Manly left the Smithsonian in March 1905 to take a job as a consulting engineer in New York. Manly still believed "that the work could be brought to a successful completion..." 

In the fall of 1905, Manly visited the Wrights at Huffman Prairie. He was shown around, but the Wrights did not fly their machine for him. The brothers did not find out until later that their visitor had been Manly.

Shortly before Langley died, The Aero Club of America published a resolution honoring Langley's contributions to the cause of flight. One of the authors of the resolution was Charles Manly.

You might think that was the end of any argument of who was the first to fly - Langley or the Wrights. But it was just the beginning.

What happened next was the result of the Wrights’ patent. The United States granted patent No. 821,393 for a flying machine designed by Wilbur and Orville Wright on May 23, 1906. Aviation pioneer Glen Curtis challenged the patent because he was making machines in violation of it. On January 13, 1914, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the patent was airtight.

The patent was powerful because it was not about any particular aircraft configuration. Rather, it was on the Wrights’ system for controlling an airplane in flight. No aircraft could get airborne without paying a royalty of about 20% on the sale of an aircraft, or alternately, making some other arrangement with the Wrights.

The Wrights’ system remains to this day the only efficient way to operate a winged vehicle.

Some important people were not happy with this situation. Henry Ford, for instance, believed that the Wrights’ patent would stifle new development.

Actually, the brothers original plan was to sell the airplane and rights to their patent for a one-time price of 250,000.The Wrights would then devote themselves to research.  Unfortunately, the U.S. and European countries weren't interested. Some like the U.S. didn't believe that the Wrights had an airplane that could fly. All were turned off by the Wrights' 'buy before fly policy" in which there would be no demonstration flights unless there was a signed contract in hand.

Bell, Curtiss and others hatched a plan to undermine the Wright patent. Curtiss in particular was desperate because a few months earlier a judge had issued the final resolution against him in the Wright patent suit. Bell and Curtiss believed that if it could be shown that the Langley Aerodrome could have flown, but failed because of a faulty launching mechanism, the Wrights’ patent would be placed in doubt.

Bell contended that the Great Aerodrome itself "was a perfectly good flying machine. There was nothing the matter with it. It stuck in the launching ways."

This launched a nefarious plan in cooperation with the Smithsonian to rebuild and attempt to fly the Great Aerodrome.

Curtiss was born in 1878. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and educated himself to become an aeronautical engineer and industrialist. As a young man he raced motorcycles, earning the reputation of a "hell-rider." He became involved in aeronautics when he was requested to furnish one of his motorcycle engines for a dirigible. This subsequently lead to supplying engines to flying machines. In 1907, he even offered to supply one free to the Wright Brothers, who declined the offer.

In 1909, he designed and built his first air machine under contract with the Aeronautical Society of New York. The society named it the Golden Flyer, an obvious play on words of the Wright Flyer.

The design incorporated ailerons to perform the function of the Wrights’ wing warping. Curtiss hoped that the use of ailerons would get around the Wrights’ patent. He was wrong.

On March 30, 1914, Curtiss called a meeting of several influential people. Attending were Alexander Graham Bell, the famous inventor and friend of Langley, and Charles B. Walcott, the new secretary of the Smithsonian. They met in Bell’s home in Washington.

Secretary Walcott was the successor to Langley who died in 1906. Walcott was an active supporter of the failed Langley’s Aerodrome project and was anxious to redeem both Langley’s and the Smithsonian’s reputation. Bell was a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents.

The group agreed to give Curtiss $2,000 of Smithsonian funds to reconstruct and test the original Langley Aerodrome. The objective was to prove that it could fly. Most importantly, Curtis had the sponsorship of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution for the task.

The Smithsonian gave Glen Curtiss the existing pieces of the Aerodrome from which to reconstruct the 1903 aircraft. Curtiss, however, did more than reconstruct the original airplane. He redesigned many features including wings. The wings had a different camber, leading edge, and aspect ratio (ratio of span to cord). Curtiss also redesigned the wing spars, the carburetor for the engine and added hydroplane floats.

The Smithsonian assigned Dr. Albert Zahm as its official representative at Hammondsport. Zahm would later falsely claim that the design changes were inconsequential. Zahm was not an unbiased observer. He had once sought employment with the Wrights as an expert witness but was spurned.

The rebuilt Aerodrome was test flown on May 28, 1914 on a lake at Hammondsport, New York. The machine allegedly flew 150 feet in a straight-line flight according to Zahm, who was also the official observer for the Smithsonian. Conveniently, there were no other observers or pictures of the flight because it occurred beyond the sight of shoreline spectators.

On hearing