The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry

6. To Change or Not to Change: Creating New Airplanes and New Pilots

Introduction 83 6 To Change or Not to Change Creating New Airplanes and New Pilots Not only did the Wright Company lose a valuable revenue stream when its exhibition department closed, but also it lost a convenient way for its pilots to test new technologies and designs in the rough and tumble of field use before incorporating them into production models built for public sale. This loss gained little notice in company communications, though, and at any rate the company developed few novel aeronautic technologies or airframe designs in need of the sorts of testing that the exhibition pilots might have provided. While the prototypical airplane changed significantly between 1910 and 1915—from pusher biplanes, where the pilot sat on the lower wing, to tractor biplanes and monoplanes The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry 84 with partially enclosed cockpits—the prototypical Wright Company airplane remained much the same, with the most significant changes in the company’s models (even its entrants in the seaplane category) concerning airplane size and engine power, not fundamental design.The company’s reluctance to keep pace with the innovations of other producers and to incorporate innovations of its own into its aircraft also reduced its sales—neither the military nor private aviators wanted to pay new-airplane prices for yesterday’s technology. Indeed, the Wright Company pointedly resisted making significant modifications to its airplanes while the adjudication of the 1906 patent wound its way through the courts.The instruction to limit the incorporation of new technology came from the company’s highest level: its president.OrvilleWright admitted in 1914 that the patent case contributed to the company’s inertia, telling a New York Herald reporter that, with the scope of the patent seemingly settled, the company was“ready to go ahead with improvements in the aeroplane now. Many of these, some radical in character, have been held in abeyance while our rights were in question.It was important to obtain protection first before bringing them before the world.” Wright was unwilling to acknowledge the many technical improvements implemented in airplanes throughout the world in the previous years, including single tractor propellers instead of dual pushers, and intuitive control yokes instead of the Wrights’ harder-to-learn lever system, asserting that the airplane of 1914 was“dynamically . . . just the same as it was ten years ago. This is as true abroad as it is in America.”His company’s reputation as being behind the times technologically even reached Europe. In early 1914, Grover Loening, then working in Dayton as the company’s manager, wrote to French engineer, aviation writer, and onetime Farman Company of America president Ladislas d’Orcy to counter that perception, advising him “that the criticism that the Wright Company does nothing to advance the science is now most unjust, since practically 90% of the time and labor of everyone connected with the Company at present is in the most advanced development work that I believe has ever been undertaken by any aeroplane company in the last four years.”Wanting to portray his employer in the best light, Loening bragged that the Wright Company was building new airplanes for the U.S.Army and Navy, though the army accepted (and subsequently dropped from its inventory) only one Wright airplane and the navy none after his letter arrived in France in 1914. By 1914, whatever attempts the Wright Company made to improve their airplanes were ignored by their potential customers.1 While Orville Wright wanted the company to move forward with the development of new, commercially competitive models after its victory in the Creating New Airplanes and New Pilots 85 courts, finding the space for innovation to occur proved difficult. The company ’s factory provided no space dedicated to research and development, and 1914’s limited income did not allow for anyone to even consider adding another building to the complex. Instead, the company’s experimental drafting and design occurred at the brothers’ former Wright Cycle Company building, at 1127 West Third Street, nearly a mile and a half to the east. Though not formally company property—the Wrights personally leased it from Charles Webbert until 1916—the structure had been informally used for company business from the start.The Wrights converted the second floor of that building into office space in 1910, and they had maintained their personal offices there since the company’s formation.During the firm’s first year...