Locomotive to Aeromotive: Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution by Simine Short (review)

Octave Chanute's contribution to the birth of aviation is well-known. As a correspondent with the Wright brothers and visitor to their shop in Dayton and encampment in Kitty Hawk, he passed along news of research in Europe, offered key insights into their proposed designs, and provided constant encouragement and publicity for their flights. The Wright brothers, of course, had sought out Chanute precisely because of his reputation as a transatlantic conduit of information into the secrets of flight. As we learn in this new biography, Chanute had nurtured his skills and sensibility as a networker his entire professional life.

Simine Short has written the first full biography of Chanute, and has done a remarkable job. Short is ever respectful of her subject, and the quotes she selects depict his gentle, open, and trusting nature. Though at times narrowly focused, her writing is direct and the research exhaustive. Chanute loved to write and his correspondence—at the Library of Congress, the Crerar Library, and the Denver Public Library—is full of intimate thoughts on his life and the state of the industries he helped develop.

Chanute came to aviation late in life, following an impressive career as a railroad engineer. A month-long steamship trip from New Orleans to New York as a youth deeply impressed on Chanute the power of new motive technology. The Hudson River Railroad hired him as a lowly chain-man in 1849, and he learned on the job. Working as an engineer for various land-grant railroads, he built many of the most famous railroad bridges that opened the American est to Kansas. The Hannibal Bridge, the first to span the Missouri River, established Kansas City as a dominant trade center. Chanute laid out America's two largest stockyards, in Chicago (1865) and Kansas City (1871), to efficiently match livestock to rail stock. He climbed the corporate ladder at the Erie Railway and, before he resigned in 1883, brought uniformity to railroad rolling stock and standardized gauge. Concerned that the demand for railroad ties was denuding American forests, he refined ways to preserve wood and made a fortune at it.

Chanute retired as a consulting engineer in 1890 and largely devoted himself to the science of aviation. Flight was possible, he thought, based on his observations of wind on roofs and bridge struts. He collected all the data he could from actual flight experiments, which he published in 1894 as Progress in Flying Machines, an influential book at the start of a decade of incredible experimentation in mechanical flight. He continued to work on defining the essential problems of flight and helped others solve them. In 1896, partnering with two men young enough to do the actual flying, he tested a variety of gliders on the sand dunes of the southern shore of Lake Michigan. These tests convinced Chanute that two wings stacked as a biplane was the best way to get more wing surface with less weight, and the Wright brothers noticed. Drawing on his experience in bridge trusses, Chanute invented a wing structure with strut-wire braces. During this decade, Chanute often apologized for his interest in flying machines and kept his flight experiments hidden to his larger circle of friends because he was embarrassed they might worry for his sanity. Perhaps that was why he took such care in validating the information that he received and passed along.

As a natural joiner and a networker, Chanute was also a key figure in the professionalization of civil engineering, with ties stretching from the Midwest into Europe. He presided over associations of engineers both large and small, convened key conferences, represented engineering at international expositions, spoke on the fostering of professional standards, and strongly encouraged the development of a foundation of scientific literature on design. He was an avid reader of, and commentator on, patents. Having done so much learning on the job, Chanute returned the favor as a mentor to others. He was...