Beschreibung:

WRIGHT, WILBUR. Typed letter signed in full and with autograph closing, to Hart O. Berg, the Wright Company's agent in Europe, New York, 16 November 1910. 2 pages, 4to, on imprinted stationery of the Wright Company, "Wilbur Wright, President," pencilled note and ink receipt stamp at top of page 1. A DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE 1910 INTERNATIONAL AIR MEET: "WHEN ORVILLE SHOWED THEM A LITTLE FANCY FLYING ON THE 30 H.P. BABY THEY NEARLY HAD FITS" A most remarkable letter in reply to a memorandum of Berg's inquiring why the Wrights had not attempted to build and fly a monoplane, similar to the aircraft built by the Frenchman Louis Bleriot, who first flew the English Channel in July 1909. "Your memorandum...would make even you laugh if you had been at the International meet. All the Frenchmen competitors] put together won only $13000 while two Wright men with double propellers, chains and American motors won $17000. They won more events, flew more hours, and flew in higher winds than the Frenchmen, and had less breakdowns. Not one of our machines, chains or propellers broke while in flight. But Drexel, Latham and Leblanc had structural breakages which came near ending their careers. Why does not the French government forbid monoplanes?- They have killed ten times more men than double propellers have. Our men were first in altitude and duration, and flew in winds so strong that they were carried tail first ....[and] no one else ventured out so the management offered special prizes for flights. Brookins went out and flew for twenty minutes and won the prize but Latham merely shrugged his shoulders....No Bleriot flyer thought of going. If we had had another week to get ready we would have won the speed prizes also. Our thirty h.p. 'baby' [the Wright flyer] beat the 50 h.p. Bleriots every time they came into competition.... "Brookins sailed right past Simon, Graham-White and Moissant....Orville on the 60 h.p. baby grand [a more powerful Wright machine] made the fastest lap of the meet, beating the best time of Leblanc and Graham-White on 100 h.p. Bleriots. His time was taken by the electric timer but not in any official events. Everyone admitted we had the fastest machine....It would have covered the 100 kilometers in about 48 minutes. As to control[,] it would have made you roar with laughter to see the Frenchmen's eyes stick out when ever Hoxsey and Johnstone got to doing stunts up in the air. They had never imagined such things. And when Orville showed them a little fancy flying on the 30 h.p. baby they nearly had fits.... "As for the American Wright Company it has made a net profit of more than a hundred thousand dollars this year...In the past 16 months we have received about [$200,000] in cash in America....[Wilbur lists the various awards and prizes they have garnered] Not a bad showing for American motors, double propellers, chains....Although our men have made above a thousand flights this year, we have not had a single parted chain, nor broken while in flight a single truss wire, strut, spar, or rib in our wings or rudder frames. No one has been compelled to make a single landing....I have not heard of any European monoplane with such a record. Why then should the [we] worry...with monoplanes which are all te time collapsing while in flight and killing the best men....besides being slower than biplanes and less controllable?....The 30 h.p. baby is almost as fast as Latham's 100 [h.p.] Antoinette. In the 30 h.p. altitude machine Orville rose 1230 ft. in 2 min. 48 sec., an average of 496 ft per min. "I am sorry the German and French companies did not send men over to America this year to learn how to build and take care of of machines, and learn what real flying is. It would have paid them well...." Apparently unpublished; not in Kelly, Miracle at Kitty Hawk.