"Wright Brothers, Wrong Story" by William Hazelgrove: Another Old Wrong Story

William Hazelgrove’s 

Wright Brothers, Wrong Story

A NecessaryReview

By Marcia Cummings Hubbard, Editor

Part I of Ii

In the summer of 1899, writes William Hazlegrove, Wilbur Wright took his first aeronautical contraption out to a field near his house in Dayton, Ohio. It was a simple kite that was constructed after a Chanute or a Herring biplane glider. According to Wilbur’s account,  he wanted to test warping the wings of the kite for lateral control, after he had gotten the idea from twisting the box of a bicycle inner tube. Wilbur and later historians described the kite event as eminently successful, and author William Hazelgrove crows in his book, Wright Brothers, Wrong Story,

“Already Wilbur knew more than anyone else investigating aeronautics."(page 69) ^[1]

Already balderdash. To any serious student of aviation history, this statement is ridiculous. The principles of flight had been studied for centuries by the time Wilbur Wright inserted himself into the picture. By 1899, all that was really needed for man to successfully fly was a light and powerful enough engine to lift the plane and its pilot into the air. 

See Dr. Albert Francis Zahm "Conspectus of Early Powerplane Development" - preface shown below. 

As stated by Dr. Zahm, "nineteenth century contributions to aviation art...[included the] addition of three-torque control." "Three-torque control" is three-way control, one of which is the lateral control that some aviation historians credit to the Wright Brothers. Wilbur Wright did not "discover" the principles involved in lateral control when he did his kite experiment in 1899, as some lightweight history detectives claim. Methods of lateral control were well known by that time and had even been patented. For examples, lateral control had been investigated by such pioneers as John Joseph Montgomery and Louis Pierre Mouillard and patented as far back as 1868 by British scientist Mathew Boulton, based on his publication “On Aerial Navigation.” Mouillard had been granted a patent in 1897 and Montgomery, who had experimented with ailerons as far back as 1885, in 1906. Even warped or twisted wings for control, as opposed to ailerons, were not a new idea, according to expert aviation pioneer Octave Chanute, who published the landmark “Progress in Flying Machines” in book form in 1894.

Nevertheless, Hazelgrove states that Wilbur’s wing warping in 1899 “was an aviation first....The first ailerons fitted to an experimental kite or aircraft of any kind.” (page 68)  

These assertions alone should discredit William Hazelgrove’s book as serious aviation history. But the author, unbelievably, goes even farther in his claims for the Wrights.

According to Hazelgrove, no one before the Wrights had studied the wings of the plane and what gave them lift. (page 57) This is nonsense! By the time of Wilbur's kite experiment, the important cause of the lift of an aircraft's wing was a fact already known to more than one pioneer. To aeronautical engineers, it's called the Bernoulli Principle. Since air travels faster over the top curve of a cambered (curved) wing, there is less pressure exerted above than from the slower moving air underneath. According to Joe Bullmer in The WRight Story, it's clear from Wilbur’s early writings and statements that he didn't know the Bernoulli Principle. Further, the Wrights claimed they discovered from their wind tunnel experiments in 1901 that the aspect ratio contributes to lift. They were late. Professor Langley's research as well as others before had shown that the wing's aspect ratio contributes to lift. It was Langley who nearly perfected the correct number of Smeaton's coefficient (to .003), for calculating lift, not the Wrights. That is clear from a letter that Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute.

Dr. Albert Zahm, referenced above, was among the pioneer investigators of wings and what gives them lift. From the University of Notre Dame:

"In 1882, an ambitious Notre Dame student named Albert Zahm built what might have been the first wind tunnel in the United States so that he could study the lift and drag of various wing shapes.

Zahm built the hand-driven contraption by removing the vibrating screens from a farmer’s winnowing blower. Two decades before the Wright brothers’ famous flight in 1903, Zahm was among the first to conclude that slender, concave surfaces shaped like a bird’s wing would make the best wings and propellers."

 

Hazelgrove, however, disregards the early history, including Dr. Albert Zahm's experiments. He instead asserts that little to nothing was known about lift, balance and control by the manipulation of a wing before Wilbur came along with his "wing warping" and his two months of wind tunnel experiments in late 1901! He thinks that when Wilbur twisted his cardboard box - Eureka! - he understood more than anyone else ever had. But by this time, actually, as Octave Chanute said, there were already various methods of lateral control, like ailerons, winglets, and wing twisting (or warping.). Even manipulation of the wings in conjunction with the rudder, as promoted in the Wright 1906 patent, wasn't new.

Astoundingly, Hazelgrove's hyperbole rockets his readers even farther into Wright outer space. He genuinely believes that Wilbur was a scientific genius of the caliber of Isaac Newton,see Galileo, or Leonardo da Vinci - the very stuff of greatness.

He maintains that the hitherto unknown "secret" of flight came to Wilbur like the flash of inspiration that manifests in the mysterious muses of artists like Mozart, Rembrandt, or Vincent Van Gogh. This is beyond balderdash. Even Newton knew that he stood on the shoulders of the giants who came before him.

“...[It] was up to [Wilbur] to crack the code of flight," says Hazelgrove. (page 56) When and where? As already stated, the “code of flight” had long been cracked before 1899. As rival Glenn Curtiss remarked when he first saw a Wright plane in 1908, "He [Orville] has nothing startling about his machine and no secrets." ^[2]

But proponents of the Wrights believe these brothers didn't need shoulders to stand on.  As time went along, the Wright followers basically claimed for them the discovery of the principles of flight and the invention of the airplane. Everyone who preceded them was a failure; everyone who came after them was a thief who copied them. The Wright adherents indeed have come to resemble a gigantic cult that celebrates ignorance and ignores science.

In promoting William Hazelgrove's book, Amazon describes it as the "first deconstruction" of the Wright history. This is another falsehood - Joe Bullmer's The WRight Story was published nearly ten years before Wright Brothers, Wrong Story. In this book, aeronautical engineer Bullmer describes "26 myths surrounding the Wright Brothers' research.”

So what is Hazelgrove's discovery that merits "deconstruction” of the history status. It’s his observation that Wilbur was the genius of the brothers Wright. It’s his recognition that as time went on, Orville slanted the story of their Flyers to exaggerate his own contributions to flight. Is that all?

 

Because this interpretation isn't new. It began even before Wilbur's death in 1912. For example, in a 1908 article in Century magazine, Orville claimed the first flight for himself. Although the article had both brothers in the byline, Wilbur didn't write it because he was in France at the time. But Orville’s flight wasn’t considered long enough by most aviators, including Wilbur, to be considered a true flight.

 

 

 

Note that when Wilbur Wright died in 1912, (see clipping below), it was accepted that he was first to fly, not Orville. Compare with Century magazine article (above) written in 1908 by Orville. Wilbur obviously knew about this article.

 

 

Will the"approved" Wright "Historians" ever get it right?

The notes presented so far are only a sampling of the astonishing number of errors in this book. Hazelgrove and other Wright "historians" simply haven't done their homework. Still, it's disappointing to advocates of historical truth that Hazelgrove’s book was approved by our own Smithsonian Institution, which is supposed to represent the pinnacle of research and science. Hazelgrove was even awarded a December 2018 article in its publication Smithsonian Magazine:"Why Wilbur Wright Deserves the Bulk of the Credit of the First Flight.

The universe is positively teeming with books and publications about the Wright Brothers. Check the list of Wright books on Amazon.com, or just type "Wright brothers" into Google. But these books, articles, and writings all tell essentially the same story, the one both Wright brothers appear to have contrived beginning on or near December 17, 1903. The same one they elaborated on in the news with their press release in 1904 and which Orville tried to cement for posterity in his Century magazine article in 1908. Both Wrights realized they had much to gain by claiming the first manned, motorized, controlled, heavier-than-air flight in history and their spin included exaggerating their own efforts and downgrading those of anyone else. 

It worked. In 1943, their story “The Wright Brothers" was widely accepted, written as a biography with the byline of journalist Fred Kelly, but in reality written by Orville and/or checked by him line by line. This was his "approved version," published before he died on January 30, 1948. Based on these stories, writers have continued retelling this basic narrative for another nearly three quarters of a century.

More Wrongs than Rights 

But by investing time and scrutiny, we have found more and more holes in the Wright story. until it’s beginning to dry and crumble like old Swiss cheese. Consequently, we are starving for real histories based on the facts we now know, Wright Brothers Wrong Story doesn't meet the criteria for a real history. The reality is that a deep study of Wright statements and writings, and those of their witnesses, uncover too many falsehoods and contradictions. Plus new scientific studies based on mathematics and aeronautical science are also exposing the fiction. See the many posts in this blog, "The Wrights: Truthinavaition history," such as articles by aeronautical engineer Joe Bullmer, studies by author/historian Paul Jackson, and research by yours truly. 

 

Siblings l to r: Orville, Katharine, and Wilbur Wright. (Author William Hazelgrove consistently spells Katharine's name wrong, as "Katherine.")

Wright Brothers, Wrong Story demonstrates that we are still being served up the same convoluted tales of the Wrights. Adding to that, the retellings can appear slipshod, poorly edited, and laced with errors from picayune to enormous. Writers clearly use their imaginations to fill in the obvious holes left by the Wrights, even though both brothers made attempts to render their story air- (and space-) tight. Orville Wright even directed his heirs to burn selected papers.

Historians Need to Dig 

If scrupulous historians want to excavate the true bones of the Wright story, with Wright DNA intact and not doctored by the Wright “historians/writers,” they are going to have to actually dig. Many partially buried clues are protruding out of the cyber sands in plain sight, like dinosaur fossil bones exposed by the weather. Historians are going to have to more carefully examine primary sources, not books by authors in thrall to the Wrights, or to the Smithsonian, or to particular geographical areas like Dayton, Ohio. 

Author William Hazelgrove has mostly penned books of fiction, though his Wright story is not his first foray into history. But if Wright Brothers, Wrong Story is an example of his history books, librarians need to re-catalogue them as fiction. As one who has spent the past many years researching the Wright story, this recent effort is mostly an elaborate attempt to reword the same old story with a "new hook" that isn't new at all. If truth in aviation history is ever to prevail, the Wright story will in fact be seen as one of the wonderful mythical tales of our American folk heroes - and much of the "genius" of the Wrights will be recognized as their ability to convince so many of their falsehoods for so long. Of course, as in many folktales, there is some truth in the telling, but this mostly myth becomes an egregious insult to history and those pioneers who came both before and after.

Unfortunately, there is more Wright fiction that must be dealt with. 

An (astoundingly inaccurate) theme that slithers through Hazelgrove's book may be one of the reasons why the Smithsonian, whose present influence encourages Wright story adherents, touts this book. It is the story of the Langley Aerodrome, and Glenn Curtiss's supposedly fraudulent attempts to rebuild and fly it. In Part 2 of this review, I will discuss these experiments and Orville Wright's attempt to discredit them, as time will permit. The Orville Wright twenty eight year long episode about this plane may, in the end, take a book. 

 _____________________________________________________________________________________

References:

 ^{[1] William Hazelgrove, Wright Brothers, Wrong Story: How Wilbur Wright Solved the Problem of Manned Flight (Amherst, NY: Promethus Books, 2018), 69. (Note: further citations from this text will only list the page number.)}

 

 ^{[2] C Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc, 1972), 125.}

 *********

Follow this blog. Also coming up: Critiques by aeronautical engineer Joe Bullmer of the most commonly accepted narrations, therefore, “references,” about the Wright Brothers' history.