up and they took me to this teenage shelter and give me soup and cocoa and conversation, and you know, you know, like you know now. one day in this process when we were doing the budget, you know, long meetings and all this thing and exhaustion, i was at the meeting where there was exactly, there was a woman being awarded for her work for troubled teenagers. and i as mayor handed her the

award, and everybody knows about this in iceland, how i was. >> that part of your life. >> yeah. most people are familiar with my story. and i thought because i couldn't remember, this may be something that i made a decision to close down, the same thing, maybe just saved my life. and i just started crying because i didn't know. and i had these times when, again, i was so exhausted, so tired. i've never experienced anything like this in my life, having to understand something that you so desperately don't want. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.or booktv.org. >> up next, lawrence goldstone

recounts the competition between wright brothers and glenn curtiss to be the predominate name in manned flight. this is about one hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. we would like to welcome you all to the rogers memorial library. my name is penny wright. i'm the director of adult programs here and we are very delighted to have a discussion tonight by an esteemed, acclaimed i should say, officially acclaimed author. we would like to thank c-span, booktv, for being with us here this evening. and when we progress to the question and answer segment, we will have a handheld microphone for you all to use when you ask your questions. we are also grateful to our local independent bookstore for

being here this evening as well. we are most happy and grateful, however, to our visitor, our test, lawrence goldstone. and i tell you a couple things about him. he is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction. six britain with his wife, nancy, and has written extensively on both american and european history. larry has been widely interviewed on both radio and television with appearances on the diane green show on fresh air, to the best of our knowledge, the faith middleton show, the take away, and tavis smiley. and now it's the rogers memorial library. [laughter] his work has been profiled into new kinds, the toronto star, salon and slate, it is articles, reviews and opinions has appeared in "the wall street journal," "the boston globe," the "l.a. times," "chicago

tribune," miami herald, and hartford current. larry's current book, "birdmen: the wright brothers, glenn curtiss, and the battle to control the skies," received starred reviews in publishers weekly and library journals. it was chosen as one of the best books of the year, so far, by "time" magazine, and was the subject of an entire column in "the new york times." it also received glowing reviews in "the wall street journal," the financial times, nature, "usa today," and the "christian science monitor." larry is an eclectic fellow and has been a teacher, a lecturer, a senior member of the wall street trading firm, a taxi driver, an actor, a quiz show contestant, and a policy analyst at the hudson institute. he currently lives in -- were

very delighted to have larry and his wife, nancy, and in the east end of long island. please welcome larry goldstone. [applause] >> well, thank you, gene. that was wonderful. and thank you all for coming. as those of you are for me with my work and no, i don't specialize in any one topic. i've written on history of medicine, science, law, rare books, baseball. i'm always, i'm looking for subjects where there is some current parallel with historical topics, something that is acute, something that can illuminate the past and the present at the same time. this book i found through my favorite method of finding a topic, and i stumbled on it. it was just complete lock.

i had been co-authoring a book, a biography of a new york bank -- new york yankee hall of fame pitcher, lefty, and doing it with his daughter. he was babe ruth best friend, joe dimaggio's roommate, and lefty was known for eccentric behavior and a series of kind of bizarre statements. what i discovered working, his daughter to this amazing job of interviewing lefty before he died. and what i discovered about lefty was that he was a highly intelligent guy, with a voice somewhere between mark twain and the great sportswriter. and very much belied the public interest, but in public lefty was a very strange person indeed. and one of his famous loves was aviation. in 1937, lefty stopped pitching

and world series game on the mound, and finally pakistan to packed stadium to watch an airplane fly overhead. this was one of lefties now what is less known about this story is that it was the bottom of the seventh and the yankees were ahead. it wasn't quite as inflammatory but it was a big deal nonetheless. what i discovered was that lefty had acquired his love of aviation as a sexual boy in 1915 at the san francisco world's fair watching the most famous aviator of the age, a man named lincoln beach. i did a little research and what i discovered was that not only was lincoln a beachy the most famous if you are the greatest aviator of the age, but with apologies to chuck aker, he was the greatest, probably the greatest aviator of any age. the things he did were so

astounding that you wouldn't, people would believe them except he did them in front of hundreds of thousands of people. in a country where the population was like 75 million, an estimate of 29 people sal lincoln fly. to give you an example, at the first great airfare, the great chicago airfare in septembe september 1910, he desperate wanted to break the altitude record. the record of the time was 11,002 the. you have to remember these people flew in evidence or completely open. there was no cockpit, just a frame and they flew in suits or know where they could keep warm was to stop newspapers in the close. and beachey discovered that in the only way to break the altitude record was to use all his fuel on the way up. [laughter] so the last day of the fair towards dusk, a megaphone man, that's what they had, there is a

grandstand, a grandstand held about 30,000 people, and there were half a million people packed along the lake land. megaphone me, goes up again, dozer line lincoln beachey will try for the altitude record. beachey goes up, sure enough he gets to 11,641 feet, and they know this because they have a thing called the aircraft mounted on the plane to use their pressure to measure altitude which i don't completely understand. he is a dot in the sky, half a million people are watching and all the sudden a dot starts to circle, gets larger and larger and larger, and the people see that the propeller isn't moving because beachey had used all his fuel on the way up. he's out over the lake where the crashes he will certainly die. he circles down and in front of half a million people he lands his airplane in front of the grandstand not 200 feet from where he took off. now that is flying.

beachey's signature trick he called the dip of death. he would take his airplane 3000 feet, 5000 feet in the air, and then had straight down. sometimes he would cut his engine. sometimes he would put his arms out and control the airplane with his knees. and would seem like it would be impossible for him not to crash, he would pull out and you either perfectly land or go off and do more tricks. he was the only person who could do this, and at least six aviators and maybe as many as a dozen died trying to what they call do a beachey as he was so famous. in those days, flying your niagara falls was certain death. the wind currents were terrible. the spray would file the motor. beachey not only in one and 50,000 people goes, he flies under a bridge, goes to one of the false on the canadian side and basically flies straight up

it. he had an interesting sense of humor. in the next chicago airfare in 1911, also front of half a million people, beachey and nudges he has trained the woman, a frenchwoman to fly. and she can fly as well as any man. they had women aviators in those days, one of which i'll talk about later but there were not a lot of them. and sure enough the megaphone and comes out of woman comes out, she's a short, relatively stocky woman wearing a heavy coat to keep warm and the big cat and she gets in the airplane and takes off. it is immediately apparent that she is not a particularly a deft aviator. the first thing she does is buzz a grandstand and everybody has to duck. then the plane maneuvers wildly and goes out over michigan avenue flying so low that the

wheels of the airplane that actually bouncing along the tops of the automobiles on michigan avenue. the plane goes again, out over lake michigan just missing the water about eight times. this goes on for about 10 or 15 minutes and then somehow she seems to get her bearings, flies pretty well, does some tricks and let's perfectly in front of the grandstand. the crowd is now applauding, probably in relief. she gets up, takes out her hat, the week comes with it and there is lincoln beachey. all of these near-death things, he could fly so he could bounce his wheels on the top of automobiles along lake michigan. you got a cincy was an odd character. beachey did not drink and he did not smoke. he had one vice which he indulged in copiously and with great gusto, and that was women.

of course he was very popular, all these people are seeing him fly. it didn't seem to bother him that he actually had a wife in san francisco, but the wife took to chasing him around the country. now this is all very, there are indivisible contemporary flies. believe me, i'm not making any of this up. he was so nervous she would get his money company open up bank accounts under phony names all across the country. there are probably some of them still have money in the. ultimately, mrs. beachey got an undisclosed but sizable settlement in 1914 when they got divorced. i did a little research and discovered that while beachey was possibly the most flamboyant there were lots of other aviators who were also wonderful. and i put together, i said this is a book so i put together a proposal, which i called the exhibitionists, the romance of destiny in the air of early

flight. many, many of these aviators died, crashed doing his tricks. i gave it to my editor and he came back and he said, these people are interesting, but nobody has ever heard of them. i thought that was a selling point but my editor disagreed and he said, well, maybe you can work the wright brothers into the title. and i thought, the exhibitionists, the wright brothers and the romance of destiny in the era of early flight? didn't have the same zip to it. but i agree to research and see if we could get the wright brothers into the book, and i must say i went about with a bit of skepticism because there's been a lot written about the wright brothers. and there wasn't really sure that there was anything new defined. well, what i discovered was that there was a remarkable amount, that there were large areas of their experience both in the invention and what they did subsequently and who they were as people that were either

fluffed over, talked about only peripherally or in some cases totally ignored, and that there was a great story there and part of that story was their war, which i'll discuss in a bit, with another great aviator, a great aviator named glenn curtiss. so i put together a proposal which is now "birdmen: the wright brothers, glenn curtiss, and the battle to control the skies," and my editor bought it. now, i am not going to extrapolate here and say the editor is always right, but in this case he was. the most important thing i learned about the wright brothers was that they weren't clones, they weren't siamese twins, they were but two of the same people. they didn't work -- this image that these two tinkerers working together in harmony, yes, they had their stats but basically it

was a swiss relationship in the back of a bicycle shop that resulted in the wright flyer. that isn't true. wilbur wright was the older brother and he was the older brother more than chronologically. wilbur pashtun orville was a great cressman, great technician at wilbur was a genius. i will discuss in a second what his genius count manifested itself in the wright airplane or in addition to being brilliant he could also be sarcastic. he could be dismissive. he could be overbearing, and he could be cruel, and he exhibited all of these traits from time to time toward his brother, orville. one example, 1980 orville is flying in fort myer near washington, d.c. to try to sell airplanes to the army, and the airplane crashed. and orville was horribly

injured, broken femur, ribs, he was in the hospital for six weeks and orville lived in july 248 and he was in pain from that injury, from injuries in the crash, his entire life. next to him was an army lieutenant named thomas selfridge who died in the crash. the first aviation fidelity. wilbur was in europe trying to sell airplanes to the military to germany, britain, france and england. and while orville was in the hospital, he wrote to orville, blaming him for the crash and saying if he had been there the crash would not have happened. it was so cruel that their sister, catherine, who was part of them, was with orville every day of the hospital wrote back and said what are you doing? wilber backed away after that but he never apologized. on another occasion they

actually wanted to sell airplanes in 19 and seven and wilbur went to europe and orville traded up a wright flyer, they could break it down and put it in crates and shipped it to friends. when wilbur opened the crates, there were a number of pieces broken, things were smashed and wilbur wrote this lacerating letter back to orville and to turn back the orville had packed the fly perfectly but the customs inspectors opened it, broke everything, put it back in, and again wilbur never apologized. so you had here a very -- orville never manifested that sort of behavior to wilbur. they were close but it wasn't like they loved each other but orville tenuous the classic little brother, and wilbur was the classic older brother dick and i think that that kind of relationship. this isn't just like family

gossip. the relationship between the brothers and what they did and what they did not do more directly on invention and what happened with the wright flyer, not only the kitty hawk but afterwards. wilbur worked alone. that's the other thing. we have this image of the two of them getting i did together and working in a bicycle shop. wilbur from 1896 until before the first trip to kitty hawk in 1900 worked alone. all the letters, all the correspondence, asking for materials to another aviation pioneer, it is on a, i, i, i. only before the trip to kitty hawk to start becoming we in the lives. wilbur never let on that he hadn't been working with orville the entire time. wilbur died in 1912.

orville lived until 1940. the last 36 years of his life, he never credited wilbur with anything individually but it was always them together which is what most other biographies and most of the things written about the wright brothers have orville and wilbur basically the same two sides of the same coin. while working alone between 1896-1890, wilbur had one of two great epiphanies. is important, nothing anything i wrote or anything anybody else wrote, should the track from the utter brilliance of wilbur wright. here is a man who did not graduate high school, never had an engineering course, new nothing about aerodynamics, which is a formative science to begin with, who solve the problem that it's the isaac newton, leonardo da vinci, and host of the greatest thinkers in history. wilbur was one of the great

intuitive scientists this country has ever produced. utterly brilliant. what he discovered was, wilbur was not interested in speed, not interested in the motor. off the water was a motor that was fast enough to create lift. would wilbur realize was the trick of controlled flight was actually controlling the airplane in the air. everyone else, and there were lots of other people working at the time, everyone else thought that the best way to have an airplane in the air was to have it maximally stable. kind of like a car you drive around. what they did was they had the wings go slightly in v-shaped from the center of the aircraft which is called a dihedral and that is for reasons i will not go into great a great deal of stability in the aircraft. what you cannot do, however, is turn except very broad and wide turns and your very susceptible to wind currents.

would wilbur recognized was the best way to create an aircraft that can fly successfully was to have aircraft that was inherently unstable. the wings of the wright flyer, and if you go to the smithsonian you will see it, actually go down a little from the center of the aircraft. and that creates instability. but you must have a means of controlling the aircraft, and this is what wilbur -- wilbur came up with a means he called wing warping. it's funny because wilbur got this from watching birds, a lot of other aviation pioneers watched birds. well, we live right in the ocean and i go down and i watched birds all the time and i'm looking for the same things they saw and i don't see them, but i guess they were smarter than i was. but whatever it was he saw that the wings buried. so what he did was with a system

of cables and pulleys -- remembered they were biplanes. the wings of one side would slant up and the others would slant down. that corrected attitude. when the plane was losing attitude in one way or another he could corrected and you could also bank on a turn, which the other airplane could not be. he got the idea for the work on bicycle manufactures. it is incredible how many aviation pioneers and automotive pioneers got their start in bicycles, with bicycles. bicycle skimming 1880s was one of the great inventions, and there have been some books written on it but bicycles changed everything scientifically. so wilbur came up with a wing warping as his means of control. the second grade inside he had, this is after he started working with orville, when they started working on powered flight was that a propeller should be

visible stubby things you find on boats because aerodynamics was informative site. so they thought take hydrodynamics and i placed a. wilbur recognized he needed an elongated propeller which is basically an airfoil, a wing turned vertically. in december 1903, they make the famous flight. one of the most famous pictures, iconic pictures, photographs is a orville lying in the center of the airplane as it takes off from kitty hawk would wilbur soon next to them. the irony there is that it was supposed to be wilbur, because they took turns. they tried first on december 14 but the point had a minor malfunction and it went straight into the sand and it was orville's turn next. so they do this. mayfly, and it's one of the great -- they fly and it's one of the great events of scientific and human history.

the only problem was nobody knew about it. they didn't go and publicize it. they didn't go to the newspaper. they didn't in any way let the world know what they have done. in fact, after kitty hawk they did not fly publicly again until 1908. and they flew, there's a place whether perfecting their aircraft and people came by, like farmers, the first accurate record of the wright flyer was in a be journal done by the keeper who happen to them fly in ohio. and the reason it worked -- before get to the reason, they are not flying publicly. 1905 they stopped completely. 1906 a brazilian coffee air living in paris build a glorified box kite with the motor and a propeller and kind

of bounces a quarter of a mile across the land. headlines across the world, he is the first to fly. nobody knew the wright brothers had done. they said they had done it but nobody believes them and in france they were called block first because nobody believed the actual flu. and to this day, brazil again showed our talk that alberto was the first to fly. is an nobody knew about the wright brothers and the reason they didn't announce it was what they're intending was, and they were completely open about this, was to establish a monopoly. not just a monopoly on airplanes with wing warping, but a monopoly that would allow them to collect a licensing fee on every airplane that subsequently went into the sky. and they filed, the first thing they did, kind of the first thing after they got them from kitty hawk, they saw the folks and then they went and hired

harry tolman was a patent lawyer. he filed their patent application to another thing most people don't know is that the wright brothers did not get a patent on a motorized airplane. their patent is basically on a glide. there's no motor because harry told him it would take too long. it would be very difficult to get it on a motorized craft so they filed for the patent which they said were received on a craft with no motor. there was a change in the patent law by the supreme court doing it on their own in the 1890s which establish something called the pioneer patent. a pioneer patent meant that not only do you get, are you granted your patents for your particular manifestation, but if you done something really cool and you done something that advances technology by some order of magnitude you can file for a

patent that allows you to click licensing fees not only on your invention that anybody who creates an intervention even roughly like yours. it's as if bill gates was going, got a patent that allowed him to collect licensing fees on anybody who created software for personal computers. now, we don't do that. pioneer patents don't really exist anymore but existed in their day and that's what they wanted. that's why they didn't fly. it got to the point that they were trying to sell their airplane, but what they were doing because of the delay in the patent, it didn't come into making it six, because of the delay in the patent refused to demonstrate their airplane. so they're trying to sell to the american military, german military, reddish military, french military. but what they're willing to do is give testimonials of the farmers and the beekeepers and

show pictures. and they're asking hundreds of thousands of dollars from these governments, and they were frankly stunned that nobody was going to pay them that kind of money based on testimonials from beekeepers. as soon as alberto flew in 1906, other french aviators started getting very close. just because you don't want to sell your product and sit on your product, it doesn't mean that technology stops. and the technology did not stop. they understood, they had no choice. they had to demonstrate the plane which is why, which was why the crated wright flyer was sent to france the customs inspectors trashed, because in 1907 over was going to try to sell it to the there is european governments, and orville had

already in the states made overtures to the american government, and that was a demonstration in which marvel was hurt and thomas selfridge died. so they fly first time in 1908, and at that point they still had the best machine. there was no machine -- none of these other formative craft could do with the wright flyer could do. the crash notwithstanding, people at fort myer were i gave at what the right like to do. he just did the things that people thought were impossible. and in europe, wilbur went from blogger to enormous celebrity he used to wear this little cap and people throughout europe or the wilbur kept the he met royalty, heads of state to the things he did flying figure eight. it was very formative of flying

but it was so far in advance what anyone else could do, would any, certain what alberto's to do and even of the french pioneers were getting closer and closer that he was just the toast of europe and the wright brothers, when wilbur kimmel they give him a huge ceremony and generals can combat testimony from the president. it was just this enormous success. the irony is that at that moment in 1908 when they flew, and the world toasted them, their aircraft had already become obsolete. tech county had caught up and would really catch up the next year. because wing warping, if think about, you can't really do it -- been moving away. you got to fabric wings in order county can really start twisting metal wings. and a better system of control which was perfected by a man named glenn curtiss, who was the

other protagonists in my book, they have the pipeline, kind of little wings set between the upper and lower airfoil that would do the same thing that wing warping to. when we go up, one would go down. they would establish control and they would enable curtiss to turn. the wright brothers got word that curtiss was developing these airplanes. he had flown some formative flights. he was doing quite well and they said, remember they got their patent in 19 or six and they threatened him with a patent infringement suit. curtiss said this is nonsense. what i'm doing is nothing to what you are doing to it is completely different, and it's better. and he ignored it and curtiss went off to france in 1909 of the first great international air show and he won the gordon bennett cup which was the single most prestigious award in aviation, and became the most famous aviator in the world.

while curtiss isnning the award in france, the wright brothers lawyers are serving his wife with papers for patent infringement. curtiss was an interesting though also. he did not start as an airplane pioneer. he started as a motorcycle -- he built motors to he said he had a speech praising the he raced bicycles, and to build motors. he got mail order -- they were pretty recent, and he got his motor, mail order motor and he said i can do better than this. and he did. and effect in january of 1907, he built an eight cylinder voter, mounted it on an elongated bicycle frame and went to ormond beach, florida, which is daytona beach, and set a land speed record of 136.7 miles per

hour. the thing went so fast that he had to strap his body down because the wind would have blown him off. buddies building these motorcycles in hamlet sport. he's from hamlet sport new york. his name is glenn hamlet cards because his parents thought -- such a wonderful place that they made, they gave him their towns named as his middle name, which i'm sure made ever really state agent in hamlet sport happy. and is building, he's building his motorcycle and in california, one of the curtiss motorcycles come to the attention of a man named thomas scott baldwin. i could do two hours just on captain tom, even though he was never a captain, professor down from even though he never went to school. he was born in probably in

illinois. no one is really sure. probably somewhere in the 1860s, no one is really sure. his parents were either killed by indians, killed by confederate raiders or abandon them. nobody's really sure. he went to an orphanage. he ran away at some point. nobody is sure sure of that either and he probably got a job in a circus as a tumblr. the first time he came to public recreation was when he would get money for doing tumbling routines on the tops of moving trains. is first grade move into aviation was thomas scott baldwin, captain tom was inventor of the flexible parachute. that parachute before that but they were rigid so if a malfunction they didn't really work and the person went to his death. he invented the flexible parachute. he put it to this use. he would go up in a balloon, 3000 the, sometimes bypass the, jumped out of the balloon holding his flexible parachute. he was in no way hardest but the

only way he was attached was by holding onto a ring, but he would do this for a dollar a foot. and people paid him because, he was really strong. he read was an acrobat and he could hang on to the ring. obviously, he did because he lived through it. captain tom went to japan, thailand, he was a world traveler. he was a charming man. everyone loved him. when he was in california at the time he saw the curtiss motorcycle, he was trying to great the world's first steerable balloon. he knew what he needed was a lightweight, powerful motor. he sees the motorcycle -- he sees the curtiss motorcycle, so he writes away. he gets this order for a motor without the cycle, the motorcycle parts attached but he sends it out and it works

brilliantly. baldwin does create the first steerable balloon, takes it to a fair in portland where the thing that's amazing, he has an amazing tricks. he has a really wonderful pilot. they call them -- delivered the first airmail. went from one part of the town to the other and landed, and this pilot, and came to baldwin as -- by the way, that was lincoln beachey. lincoln beachey was the balloon, that's what he starred as a teenager. beachey, just to give you one over the same, he was world famous before he ever got behind the airplane. beachey went to washington, d.c. in 1905 and flew around the capital. people -- there were pictures of

it around the capital building. congress adjourned. they all ran out on the lawn to watch them. they invited him in for lunch. he said he wanted to lend his airplane on the white house but the president was no because nobody -- nobody was supposed to do that in those days. and people in washington, d.c. about an hour later started appearing with little buttons, little paper buttons saying yes, i saw it. so captain tom goes east to meet curtiss. card is basically a durbin out of central new york and captain tom have been everywhere, including 3000, 5000 feet up. completely -- baldwin charged curtiss. curtiss -- and curtiss' expertise was intoxicated to baldwin and they started putting bowlines together. they started working in concert. then they went to fares.

one of the fares they went to was in dayton, ohio, in 1906. and in dayton in 1906 they ran into a couple of brothers who have something to do with aviation, and wilbur and orville wright, and baldwin and curtiss seem to get along well and the wright brothers invited them back to their workshop for a chat. and what happened in that meeting is the single most controversial and pivotal meeting in the history of american aviation. the wright brothers later claimed that they told curtiss everything and he went off and stole their ideas. curtiss said this was nonsense. all he was trying to do was to talk generally and he was trying to sell the motors for the airplanes to the correspondence,

a definite was trying to sell the motors because the letters would indicate that he was and the letters went back and forth and they were cordial. and also the notion that the wright brothers who would not demonstrate the airplane at the time to the heads of the military of germany, france, britain and the united states, we give all their secrets to curtiss seems a little far-fetched. but it is equally far-fetched that curtiss left that meeting with nothing. because shortly thereafter alexander graham bell got in touch with them. alexander graham bell was funding a group of people to try to develop a fixed wing aircraft. and curtiss became this remarkable innovator. now, curtiss later claimed that he never used wing warping, it did not, and that is were superior, and they were.

it is hard to believe that curtiss got no information, no insight, nothing that enabled his. just one note. in a modern aircraft today, there isn't one single component we owe to the wright brothers except possibly the configuration of an airplane. the list of things we owe to glenn curtiss is still two to three papers, wheeled landing gear, steering wheel, first man to have an airplane that could take off a ship, for spend to develop an airplane that could land on issue. first workable hydroplane. curtiss was not the intuitive scientist that wilbur wright was, but he was an absolutely brilliant innovator and for him to been to history is kind of a crime. after that meeting, that is what caused the wright brothers such animus towards curtiss.

and they sued in 1909, as you know and curtiss is off in france, and it is set in what is called in aviation history the patent wars. wilbur, also in 1909 the wright brothers took in a consortium of investors, really rich guys. it was started by j.p. morgan and included the belmont and the vanderbilt and a lot of other very, very wealthy people. but the other investors, just to give you an idea how powerful of j.p. morgan was, the vanderbilt and the belmont's would not invest if morgan did because they thought he would push everybody around. i found a pretty impressive but anyway, the idea was to get wilbur back in to the shop. he was president, or the with vice president, and wilbur simply refused. he pursued his patents case against curtiss, micromanaging it, talking to the lawyers.

the last letter before he died was to frederick fish, this patent attorney, not to a family member, decrying how long the suit is taking. he died of typhoid fever. he had gotten really thin. he was always been. hevent itself into the ground ad died of typhoid fever in may 1912. in february of 1913 they won the patent suit. it never collected a dime. the reason, i'm running out of time so you will have to read the book. orville wright gave an interview to the new times to which he accused glenn curtiss of essentially killing his brother by the perfidy that he had exhibited by openly stealing their ideas and refusing to pay them licensing fees, to which curtiss responded no sane man would make that charge. before the question i just want to touch on one other aviator.

i said there were these remarkable aviators and beachey was flying and some of them were women. there was a woman who, and neely erhardt was doubtless a wonderful aviator, and disappeared and probably died tragically. -- amelia earhart. but before amelia earhart there was a woman named harriet quimby, born on michigan farm, moved to san francisco at either a late teenager or early 20s, she tended to like about her age. she became an actress and roof with a woman named linda ornaments and was also an actress and they went through seven cisco. harry quimby was also by the way genworth out to be the most beautiful woman that anyone had after seeing. just a bizarre this is the most people won't come and cheesy pictures of her, just stunning. they couldn't quite make their acting career ago, so harriet equity also doubled as a journalist. she wrote articles on serb

earnhardt and the daughter of the chinese ambassador who came to america with bound feet and all these flashy articles, many of them in the san francisco call. herriot moves to new york to become, work for leslie's weekly which is a very popular weekly magazine at the time. linda stays in san francisco and becomes romantically involved with an actor, laurence griffiths. and eventually they moved to new york and lords griffis acting chris dodd taking off it also decides to go into production and maybe this new thing called film but linda hated lords, which i think is a vertically nice name, and decide, told him that instead he should use his initials which were dw. so d. w. griffith is in making sure towns on long island the they reunite with harriet quimby. she is an actress. harriet quimby has a bit part. she's writing screenplays.

she cajoles her editor into paying for flying lessons at the meet and belmont park and she becomes successful, becomes the first woman to get a pilots license. the year after that becomes the first woman to fly across the english channel. she develops, she designs her purple flanks it which is a one piece flying suit that converts into a dress -- [laughter] and became one of the most famous and was a great flyer, she tragically, she also tragically died. in a boston airshow in 1912, either she felt out -- you know, they were so formative, they didn't even use seatbelts until bashing seat belt started coming in 1910, although in 1911. whether she was wearing some kind of restraint it's unclear but she died when she fell out of her airplane. to me this was just such a remarkable woman, and for her to of been lost in history is a

tragedy. as curtiss and beachey and all of these plain your flies. so in addition to the wright brothers and curtiss, which i hope is a strong story, that i could bring some of these people back was just a great tribute. so i would love to take some questions but remember, you have to wait for the microphone. anyone? yes, sir. wait, wait, wait. >> i've read the book. you did bring out the beachey died in -- >> some of the people watching may not have bought it yet and i was hoping to leave that part out. [laughter] >> okay. spent you let the cat out of the bag. yes, beachey dies. >> well, most of them die. my question is when i read the book, to me there was a space that you just briefly mentioned

about the horizontal lift which is the propeller. you really didn't go into too much detail about how the wright brothers worked on it. in other words, the other things you're speaking about were good on what you're doing, but that part left me with a bit of a blank on how to actually came to be an epiphany as it were, to put that propeller, elongated propeller on the right flyer. because most of the experiments like you said were done with gliders really. >> okay. most of it, most of it, it's a balancing act in a book like this but i wanted to have enough science but you can't -- most of it was trial and error. in fact, one thing that is in the book, the wind tunnel had

been invented already, but it was a very imperfect, and when the wright brothers realized when the wing which, of course, is card on the top to allow the air to move faster over the top, it has to be exactly right. if the high point is not in the middle, it's closer to the front of the wing, and they were having a problem because they were using the tables done by another aviation pioneer, and it wasn't working. so they invent, they more or less invent it even though they're been primitive wind tunnel to they more or less invented a window to come up with a better air flyer. most of what they did in those trips to kitty hawk were trial and there. they would try stuff. the plane would go in the ground. so they would change the measurements. orville really was a remarkable

master craftsman, and they would just take thousands and thousands of measurements. they would try different things into we found one worker in fact after the first year in kitty hawk they thought it would all be wonderful. they would back the second year, it was a disaster. it kept crashing in the grand to get to go back. that's when had to go back and we formulate everything. so yes, i mean, i wanted to avoid making it to technical. i will say, however, that nature magazine, one of the preeminent, they said i do not skimp on the science which was extremely gratifying to me because my daughter reads the magazine. i was terrified of a bad review. [laughter] [inaudible] >> anyone else? yes.

>> might extremely talented assistant is on her way with the microphone. >> were there any other stories you came across that you regretted not having space to include? >> probably about a thousand. there are -- the people who were flying were so remarkable. remember, there were no test pilots. these before the test pilot. that's why so many of them died, because they were trying out concepts. they were trying out things that were completely new. half of the beachey story i couldn't fit in. there were other aviators, there was remarkable progress in aviation in russia at the time, which there was no room in the book for at all. it was a lot of the wright brothers material. one of the reasons i made the decision i did about the wright brothers is there is so much written about them that i wanted

to spend a lot of time on the places where people didn't cover it. for example, -- this is in the book, but they were all terrible businessman. curtiss hooked up with a guy who was a major fraud and the wright brothers i said, you know, didn't go back to the shop. gersh corresponds between a man named andrew friedman who, the people of investors put up to handle the businessman, between andrew friedman and wilbur wright which are incredibly eliminating, and i can only put in a couple of those where he can't think of what's going on? you're supposed to be making yoe airplanes. why are you doing this? why aren't you at this airshow? curtiss is that this airshow, why are you at this airshow? you get a flavor for the. what i tried to do was delete everything that's needed to give

you the picture, you know, impressionistic lake of everything you needed to know about the story i wanted to tell but there is vast areas. i could've made the book three times the length. anyone else? yes, sir. >> you said that the list of contributions that curtiss made was much longer than what the wright brothers made, but worth the wright brothers the ones that did all that trial and error to make the discoveries about the wing and the importance of the mechanism for steering, or were other people at the same time making those discoveries come you said there was the brazilian and the russians. >> there was a man in egypt, but you really good question but that was a man in egypt when mentioned in passing.

he was the most famous civil engineer in america. he build bridges across the missouri and he retired with great wealth and became kind of the clearinghouse for information. he was the first, after wilbur wrote, wilbur wrote to the smithsonian to get material. the first thing he really correspond with to try to refine his ideas was the egyptian. everybody in the world was essentially sending him notions and then implants and some estimate the there was a man in egypt who may or may not have come up with the idea of changing the orientation of the wing tip. the wright brothers denied and they are probably largely right but it is the same kind of situation you had with curtiss. the technology is moving forward to it will work right hadn't

discovered this, somebody was going to. but wilbur did it and we reported that and should reward that because it was under come insightful, intuitive brilliance. so yes, we owe the wright brothers a dead but it was also a tragedy -- a debt. but it also tragedy after 19 and three there was not a single innovation at either of those brothers me that not only did we have and moderate democrats but for an aircraft at the time. the aircraft come in fact when people started flying doing the stunt flying and doing more difficult line, that's when flyers started to die in the diet disproportionally in right aircraft because wing warping was not good and tight turns, in stressful flying. so yes, there is no underestimating what wilbur did, and orville, too, for his part in the process. but it is equally true that

technology doesn't simply stop. i don't know the man. i think it was -- nobody talks about them. we talk about the pioneers became subtly. there's kind of a place for both. i can take one more i think. wait, wait, wait. you have violated protocol. yes. >> what patent could they possibly have? they were basically flying a kite. how could anybody after them infringe on, you know, what was so important about the wings, basically -- >> the aircraft will do this. [inaudible] >> no, no, no. is also a means of control to a

german lived outside of berlin and he formulated wings, actual 30-foot wide wings which he braced himself against and ran down a hill and glided. if you look at pictures you'd say that's is one of the nuts trying -- but he took tens of thousands of measures of different airfoil shapes. so those cables the wright brothers used first, the camber of the wing was known. wanted a patent is was this ability to change what they called change allow rule margin of the wings and control the aircraft in flight. and nobody had done that before. the broad flat turns with the best they could do before that, and these aircraft, early airplanes are susceptible to shift in wind where they crashed a lot. so the wright brothers invented

the first controlled powered flight and the motor was weak but a change that later. so no, their invention, they deserve the patent. whether they deserved a patent to taken everything that was done subsequently, that is unclear, but they definitely deserved the patent on their invention, and should have come anybody used it they should have to pay for. i want to mention actually we have at least two pilots in our audience. thank you for coming. we are going to thank you, but could you just and by telling us what you're up to next? and there's huge interest you in the subject, which have made their interesting for the reader, how's that logic you another line of thinking of writing about? >> thank you for the question. and despite what anyone thinks,

i didn't even need to pay her to ask me. [laughter] i'm actually working on a book, a similar book called horseless about automobiles which is the same kind of study of the progress of technology and innovative process which focuses on henry ford, who i don't want to give it too much away, but what the wright brothers were brilliant innovators but not particularly good businessman, henry ford i think a something of an overrated innovative which i think the reader will see, but an utterly brilliant businessman. so that's what i'm working on them. thank you so much for that. [laughter] spent we would all like to thank you. it's been fascinating, and eliminating. we will be back for your next book reading when it's finished. thank you all for coming. it's been a wonderful evening, thanks. [applause]

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