USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > The story of Dayton > Part 12
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Curiosity prompted these questions and the play in- stinct drove the experimenters on. As the tests proceeded they became absorbing; from play the enterprise developed
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ORVILLE WRIGHT
صر.
AWILBUR
RESOLUTION Of CONGRESS ARCH
IN.RECOGNITION AND APPRECIATION OF THEIR ABILITY COURAGE AND SUCCESS IN NAVIGATING THE .ALE
SAALEMOUNT UP WAD WINGS/ STAGLES
Medal Presented to the Wright Brothers by the United States Government, "In Recognition of Their Ability, Courage, and Success in Navigating the Air."
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The Home of Aviation
into "sport." and from sport into intense pursuit of a new scientific principle hitherto undeveloped.
Much current writing on the subject of the Wright brothers has been incorrect. People have believed that the aeroplane was developed by a lucky accident, perhaps after the fashion of the little man in the ballad who,
"Took four spools And an old tin can, Called it a Jitney And the blamed thing ran."
If you hear the Wright aeroplane, the most wonderful achievement in all history, ascribed to the chance happening of two untrained minds, please take pains to deny it on the spot. The exact opposite is the truth. Nothing really good is done without study ; nothing truly scientific without lab- oratory experiment. The Wright brothers were, from first to last, omnivorous readers, painstaking students. To these characteristics they added a colossal capacity for work. No effort was too long or hard if by it they learned the least new principle. The truth was what they were continually in pursuit of, even if it upset their pet theories.
The reason for this misapprehension on the part of mag- azine writers and the press in general, is that the Wrights never posed. They never assumed scientific nor pedantic airs. To the general view, they were two ordinary men in ordinary clothes, with sometimes soiled hands, who fussed unendingly with complicated machinery and talked to nobody but each other. But behind every step of advance there lay interminable calculations, precise estimates, and years of research.
Think of the enterprise in all its bearings, that they had embarked upon ! It was as if a sea captain, in order to cross the ocean, must work out the science of navigation from the beginning, build his own ship, invent a compass and sextant, and make out tables of latitude and longitude. Christopher Columbus indeed! We had two of him right here in Dayton !
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To give a technical account of the mechanics of the aero- plane is out of the question in a small book. "Stabilizers," "wind tunnels," "dynamic efficiency" are mere words to the ordinary reader. What we, as fellow citizens of the Wrights should know, is the story of what they meant to do and how they attacked the problem. What they did do needs no tell- ing anywhere under the sun.
From 1890 to 1900 was the period of greatest activity in aeronautics. Over in France, Santos Dumont was sailing
The shop on West Third Street where the Wright Brothers began experiments.
in a gas-supported balloon. Here in Dayton, the Wrights watched every move and kept up with the changing theories. What they had in mind was not ballooning, but the construc- tion of a heavier-than-air machine that would fly. Four years of study preceded their first experiments. They took no one into their confidence, "Darius Green" and the author of "perpetual motion" being a crowd they did not care to be associated with in the public mind. Some locality had to be
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The Home of Aviation
found in which to make mistakes unseen. Also, since wind was the motive power, they needed a wind-swept plain. Consulting the Weather Bureau at Washington resulted in the information that the region near Cape Hatteras on the North Carolina coast was as windy and lonesome a place as could be found on the map. At Kitty Hawk, then, on a strip of sandy shore, a shop was set up and in the fall of 1900, experiments began.
At this time the idea aimed at was to construct a machine to be flown as a kite, in winds with a velocity of from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, to be operated by levers through cords from the ground. Undertaken in the same spirit as golfing or ice-sailing, it was important play, no more. Start- ing at the top of a long hill, with somebody to push ; coast- ing down hill on the air,-it was vastly interesting, the one great difficulty being the balance. It was not merely a question of constructing a machine with the right kind of wings, but the calculating of wind pressures; not merely to stay up, but to keep level and alight without wrecking.
Always success evaded them. At last the conclusion was reached that the trouble lay, not with faulty mechanism, but with the mathematics of the air. Up to this time the broth- ers had adhered faithfully and placed implicit confidence in the tables worked out by Lilienthal. It was presently seen that those calculations did not go far enough. The brothers decided to work entirely from original calculations. A con- trivance called a "wind tunnel" was constructed to measure the force of wind currents. It was discovered that the pressure of wind at a certain velocity varies as it strikes upon different shaped surfaces-one certain pressure on a square plane, another on a three-cornered one; that it varies moreover according to the thickness of a plane, the curve of the wing, the shape of the edge; no variation was too insignificant to have an influence on the lifting power of the mechanism.
Having succeeded in building a machine that would carry itself in a gliding flight, a man was put on board to
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The Story of Dayton
do the guiding, and the ground ropes dispensed with. At first the aviator lay flat on his face as he worked the levers. It was three years before the lift was established and the steering controlled; it remained only to supply the power to keep it going. But imagine the endless experiments, the many discouraging failures, the few bewildering successes, the endless arguments between the brothers, before the aero- plane, as we know it, was an accomplished fact.
December 17, 1903, was the day on which IT actually happened. A gasoline engine of their own make had been installed in the machine and three successful flights were made, each lasting a little longer than the one before it. At the fourth flight, the aeroplane, with engine and man, weigh- ing altogether seven hundred and fifty pounds, rose on the wind, steadied itself under control, stayed up for fifty-nine seconds and landed without wrecking. It is not too much to say that it was an epoch in the history of the world. And right at that point was where the whole thing stopped being play and became to the brothers the one soul-absorbing ob- ject in life. That single minute in the air made the differ- ence between an attractive hypothesis and an amazing pos- sibility.
In 1904, the workers and the workship came back to Dayton. Through the generosity of Torrence Huffman, they were allowed to use, for their experiments in flying, a flat expanse of ground some eight miles east of the city. Arrangements having been perfected for their first flights, an invitation was extended to the daily papers to send repre- sentatives. About ten reporters accepted, and exhibited a luke-warm interest. No one seemed to comprehend the dif- ference between flying in a gas balloon and flying with a heavier-than-air machine. The indifference of the specta- tors will not be found astonishing when it is learned that that invitation day was the exact time the engine took for misbehaving. The aeroplane followed willingly enough the length of its track, then ran off into the grass and sulked. Again it was started, but refused to rise. The visitors went
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The Home of Aviation
back to town not much disappointed; they had seen all they expected to.
Another invitation was sent out, and that time a spring broke and spoiled the show. Each time, the faulty piece of mechanism had to be duplicated in the shop, which, of course, took time, during which delay what little interest there was in the experiments, evaporated. The reporters were pleasant about it for they liked the Wrights (deluded dreamers though they undoubtedly were), and in their ac-
Chorus of school children, Wright Day, June 17, 1909.
count of the flying, let the inventors down as gently as possible. Later invitations were ignored. Huffman Prairie was a good way out, it was windy, and there was no fun watching a flying machine that did not fly.
It should be understood that Dayton people were not, on the whole, so much duller than others. It has transpired since then, that when flights had been going on quite long enough to prove their genuineness, a representative of one of the leading New York dailies came out to Dayton to
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have some fun for his paper at the expense of those two young pretenders. He was to go to the aviation field and give the whole thing a "roast." He came and he departed. What he saw at Huffman's prairie took all the wind out of his sails. The combination of impressions, personal, me- chanical, scientific, so filled him with amazement that at the risk of losing his salary he refused to write anything except in unbounded praise of the Wrights.
There came a day, however, when the story the reporters might have written would have been different. You per-
"She stirs, she moves, she seems to feel the thrill of life along her keel." Huffman's prairie, 1905.
haps, were one who never lost faith in the possibilities locked up in that shed on Huffman prairie, and every day when it was possible, you took the Springfield traction out to the aviation grounds and hung over the fence with your eyes glued on to the proceedings on the other side. On that certain day, as on so many others, the doors of the shed were pushed open by some unimportant looking individuals
STOOD NIVIP SJOVHS MOONIM
E
SONILIVE SHIOT HO
CARPETS WALL
SHOE!
Dayton's welcome to the Wright Brothers, June 17, 1909.
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in working clothes, who wheeled this strange contrivance into view,-two canvas planes, a mysterious mass of wires, steering gear, and rudders. Then another man climbed into the seat, seized the levers and started the en- gine, which began to buzz and whirr, as, pushed by two assistants at the side, it gradually got under headway. Like a long-winged bird, striking the ground by short running steps to get its lift for flight, you saw it gaining impetus. Then, into your mind came Longfellow's lines on the launch- ing of the ship,
"She stirs, she moves, she seems to feel the thrill of life along her keel"-
only, instead of a keel, it was the spreading wings that were feeling the stir of life. Responding to the lift of the wind and the propulsion of the engine, slowly they began to rise. The wheels were actually leaving the surface of the ground. Across the field, beneath the mechanism of the aeroplane, you could see the line of trees on the far side. Like a huge, stately bird it left the earth and climbed in diminishing cir- cles, steadily and surely, towards the white clouds in the summer sky. Then, if you had any imagination, if you comprehended the least part of what had just taken place, you came mighty near to having hysterics, and so did all the rest.
Here in Dayton, where we had always lived-in plain old Dayton-Stephenson, Fulton, Morse were all outdone! That flight of a machine weighing one thousand pounds, will go down in history as one of the marvelous accomplish- ments of human ingenuity.
After it was over, no fuss, no boasting, no airs. Neither on the boggy soil of Huffman prairie with a group of school- boys and mechanics looking on, nor on the aviation fields of Italy, France, or Germany, with kings and emperors waiting for a word with them, did the Wright brothers in- dulge in any self-glorification. The seemingly impossible had been accomplished, which was all they worked for, all they wanted. Not the least of the triumph was the small
Wilbur Wright explaining the principles of flight to King Alphonso of Spain King Alphonso to the left. Wilbur Wright center.
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amount of money expended. It is stated that Sir Hiram Maxim spent two hundred thousand dollars in his experi- ments ; Langley, one hundred thousand-half of it govern- ment money; Ader, the French aviator, the same. The Wrights spent just five thousand, and-succeeded.
As to Dayton, it did after awhile, take notice of what was going on at Huffman prairie, and there came a time when experiments had to be discontinued on account of curious and admiring crowds. What reception the Wrights met when they escaped the disadvantage of their surround- ings and went to Europe, does not belong to our story. They returned to us in time bearing honors from every country and every ruler, and then we, too, waked up to express pride in our "Bird-men." You will recall, perhaps, sitting in your father's office window and watching the procession on "Wright Day." A pageant of transportation it was, and most inspiring. The birch-bark canoe was un- doubtedly the first means of transportation that the Miami Valley ever knew; then came the pirogue, like the one which brought our first settlers; then the Conestoga wagon, big enough for an emigrant family and its possessions ; a stage- coach, marvelous advance in speed and comfort; the first steamboat ; Fulton's locomotive; the modern farm wagon ; the carriage and buggy; the automobile; the dirigible bal- loon; the AIRPLANE.
THIS was the day when Dayton entertained a larger crowd than during the Harrison rally in 1840. Have you ever seen the streets so full of an enthusiastic populace ? How proud we were of our fellow citizens, the Wright brothers, who acted as if that kind of thing happened to them every day. So quiet they were on the platform at the fair grounds where medals from the United States Govern- ment, the State of Ohio, and from the Republic of France were presented to them! So quiet, when speeches were made and compliments bestowed, that we suddenly knew we were learning new standards of personal dignity and self-control.
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It was inspiring to rise when the crowd rose, and sing "Long may it wave," led by the five thousand school chil- dren who, in red, white, and blue dresses, formed that big flag on the platform.
In the years since that celebration the Wright Com- pany (alas, no longer the Wright Brothers), has gone on improving the aeroplanes which are now manufactured for the trade. They have met the requirements of their con-
7
A Wright Glider.
tract with the United States Government, to furnish a flyer that will carry two men and fuel for a flight of one hun- dred and twenty-five miles at a speed of forty miles an hour.
The question of stability has been definitely settled by the invention of an automatic stabilizer which will enable the machine to "fly itself." Scores of young aviators have been taught the principles of aviation on the field at Huff- man's prairie. The air has been conquered, and it was done in Dayton.
CHAPTER XVIII. 1913.
Dayton's Unforgetable Week.
Flood, Fire, Frost, Starvation, Mud! One hundred thousand hands held out for help. The Federal Government to the rescue. The river resumes its channel. Spades, brooms, shovels, sun- shine, and handshakes. "Remember the promises made in the attic." Two millions for flood prevention. "A bigger and a safer Dayton."
The last occurrence in the Story of Dayton is that of the Flood of March, 1913. Much has been written about it, but the whole story can never be told! How, on that fateful morning, the bells rang and the whistles blew, utterly failing to rouse people to a sense of their danger; how back- water stood in the streets nearest the river and we said, "Ah, high water again," and went about our business; how housekeepers answered the frightened questions of their help by saying, "Nonsense, the Miami River has never come into my house yet, and it never will"; how on the very word of denial a brown wave of water, six feet high, rolled its foaming crest westward on the streets and meeting at each corner a similar wave from the north, piled the water into a raging torrent which filled the streets with foam and wreckage, drove people to their second stories or to the roof ; how the noise of the city traffic suddenly changed to a deathly silence broken only by the angry roar of a cur- rent like Niagara itself; how night fell, and with it utter black darkness, only lifted later by the ominous glare of flames ; how the imprisoned citizens waited in their fireless, foodless homes for help that could not reach them; how horses swam pitifully about the streets trying to find foot- holds; how people escaped from tottering houses into trees and trolley poles, whence some were rescued and some sank
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CHAPTER XVIII. 1913.
Dayton's Unforgetable Week.
Flood, Fire, Frost, Starvation, Mud! One hundred thousand hands held out for help. The Federal Government to the rescue. The river resumes its channel. Spades, brooms, shovels, sun- shine, and handshakes. "Remember the promises made in the attic." Two millions for flood prevention. "A bigger and a safer Dayton."
The last occurrence in the Story of Dayton is that of the Flood of March, 1913. Much has been written about it, but the whole story can never be told! How, on that fateful morning, the bells rang and the whistles blew, utterly failing to rouse people to a sense of their danger; how back- water stood in the streets nearest the river and we said, "Ah, high water again," and went about our business; how housekeepers answered the frightened questions of their help by saying, "Nonsense, the Miami River has never come into my house yet, and it never will"; how on the very word of denial a brown wave of water, six feet high, rolled its foaming crest westward on the streets and meeting at each corner a similar wave from the north, piled the water into a raging torrent which filled the streets with foam and wreckage, drove people to their second stories or to the roof ; how the noise of the city traffic suddenly changed to a deathly silence broken only by the angry roar of a cur- rent like Niagara itself; how night fell, and with it utter black darkness, only lifted later by the ominous glare of flames ; how the imprisoned citizens waited in their fireless, foodless homes for help that could not reach them; how horses swam pitifully about the streets trying to find foot- holds ; how people escaped from tottering houses into trees and trolley poles, whence some were rescued and some sank
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RIVERDALE.
MAIN STREET BRIDGE
This picture was taken by Mr. George C. Edgeter at 10 30 a. m., Wednesday, March 24. 1913. The crest of the flood occurred at 2 a. m. that morning
CENTER OF DAYTON
DAYTON VIEW BRIDGE
WEST SIDE
Reproduction by his kind permission. All that now remains of this appalling catastrophe are a few stained bricks in the walls of houses, and the scar on the memories of the people who went through It.
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to death; how friends outside haunted the telegraph offices for news and got only silence; how on the third day, when the river receded, it left Dayton a mere disfigured ghost of her usual self, with heaps of debris piled, in some places, as high as the houses themselves, with charred ruins in- stead of business blocks, with asphalt pavement rolled up like huge bales of carpet, with vacant foundations whose houses had vanished Cincinnati-wards, with broken water mains, wrecked street cars-Ruins! Waste! Desolation ! No, it certainly never can be adequately told !
The frightfulness of it put Dayton on the map in a new and most unwelcome way. The silver lining of that black and awful cloud, the story of how we righted ourselves, has not, however, been sufficiently recorded. It is a matter for which we have every right to feel proud. The measure of a man is the way he meets disaster, and of a city, no less.
When, on that morning of March twenty-third, suburban business men were turned back from their accustomed jour- ney to town, by the flood which converted Dayton into a three-mile sea, their grasp of the situation was prompt. Even with the lack of telephone service it needed only a few hours in some sections, to bring people together and set them to work. School houses were utilized as relief stations to which the dwellers in the ward brought cots, blankets, milk and bread, ready for the half-drowned refugees who, by early afternoon, were being rescued from their sub- merged homes.
In Dayton View, the notice was put up at ten o'clock, the committee came together at one, at half-past they were all at work and by six the rooms and halls of the school house were packed with distracted and suffering people. Five hundred were fed there three times a day for two weeks; fifteen thousand were taken into private houses in that one suburb, and five thousand were reached by boats and fed in their own homes.
In all the unsubmerged parts of town the same thing was going on. Housing committees were appointed to find
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accommodations for the homeless, transportation commit- tees to look up wagons, boats, and automobiles ; supply com- mittees to levy contributions from grocers and farmers. There was the emergency department, manned by doctors and nurses. Long before the United States Government took charge and put us under martial law, everybody had been made to work, whether he chose or not; few did not.
Our largest factory changed its output from cash reg- isters to flat boats, one of which was turned out every eight minutes, and launched to the rescue of people clinging to
The Flood at the corner of Fourth and Ludlow, Grace Church.
roofs and trees. The president of the factory stood hip deep in water for hours, directing the work of the boatmen. Boys who owned canoes did valiant service in taking people from upper windows to places of safety. Girls stood for hours giving out supplies. Women who had sipped their breakfast coffee in serene ignorance that anything more momentous than ironing day was ahead of them, found themselves a few hours later, feeding half-drowned babies or identifying bodies brought in by the rescue corps. For four whole days, men worked in mud-soaked garments, for- getting their own discomfort in relieving the sufferings of
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others; not a few of these obscure heroes died later from exposure.
In those days of primitive necessity, Dayton people ac- quired a new point of view. During that dreadful week they discovered the difference between essentials and non- essentials. Women whose souls had never been above housekeeping, watched the yellow flood sweep over their best-loved possessions without a pang because what they most cared for just then was to know of the safety of the husband who had left the breakfast table two hours before. Men saw the savings of a lifetime swept away without com- plaint, so thankful were they that wife and children were above high water. Women worked side by side with peo- ple they never would have met socially, and found out how nice they were. Millionaires stood in the bread line and made a joke of it.
When the water went down, what work for city au- thorities and for housekeepers! The torrent which had poured through our streets was of the consistency of pea soup. It was composed of the washings of barnyards and pigpens from up the river, mixed with the refuse of city alleys, sewers and cess-pools, the contents of paint and varnish factories, vats of glue and acid, of oil mills and garages. This detestable soup, boiled and mixed by the violence of the current, was spread over the Oriental rugs and parquet floors of fine houses, over cushions in the churches, shelves of the public library, the displayed stock in department stores, and into the well-kept homes of work- ing people. If left untouched for a week or two, the de- posit hardened into a sort of concrete which resisted every implement but a pickaxe.
It was an emergency that had to be met frankly and bravely. Men, and women, too, who had scarcely in their lives ever held a tool, went to ditch-excavating in their own parlors. Everybody was dirty, for there was no water to wash in, and precious little to drink. Everybody was ap- pallingly tired and went to sleep wherever he dropped.
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Everybody was thankful for butterless bread and canned beans, brought by the Red Cross Society.
First with boats, and later with supplies, the Federal Government came to our relief. Dayton was put under martial law, and for the first time since 1863, armed sentries
By Order of Gov. James M. Cox The City of Dayton, Ohio Has been placed under
Martial Law By his orders I hereby assume command of Troops on duty
The citizens of this city are requested to be of service to the National Guard by remaining in their homes, or if out on bus- iness, remain as far away from the flooded district as possible. No sight seers or excursionists will be allowed to disembark in Dayton. The various railroads are requested to assist in the enforcement of this measure by refusing the sale of tickets to others than those having the most urgent business in the City of Dayton.
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