The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1908-12-04

| nying the stories, about exorbitant de-
mands made by them, narrated how
some foreign customs officers, with busy
patriotism, took their flying machine
apart and made complete measurements,
and how Mr.. Wilbur Wright's fight in
France was delayed because his work.
men had failed to ship box of little
! bolts, which the French hardware shops
could not come near duplicating. When
we got to the description of his flights,
he showed me a complete record in
| splendid photographs of their trials
with gliders and motor driven machines
as they progressed"
Reverting to the charges of secrecy,
Mr.. Wright gave this account, taking
tilt at the enterprising fellow journal
list who always delights in giving u
great air Of difficulty and mystery to his
achievements in behalf of his news
paper:
"'They have called us secretive,'
Mr.. Wright began, with smile. 'We
have made many practice flights out at
Simms "a village near Dayton], and
often we had people stop in wagons and
automobiles to watch us. Then we pub
lished what we were doing in aero
nautical journals, and nearly every
thing that we had was on record at the
Patent Office. OF course, there were
curious men that we did not care to
have watch us too closely, and when we
suspected that experts were on hand we
stopped flying. 1t costs too much to be
continually patenting things as we try
them out.
But we never cared about the gen.
eral public. We invited the local news
papers to watch us, asking only that,
cameras be barred. We got off for a.
long time without much notice, because
the public did not seem to know the
difference between dirigible balloons
and aeroplanes. They were both called
airships. And with Santos Dumont stay
and two young bicycle makers in Day
ton only a few minutes, the home news
didn't attract. And even when We
went down to Kitty Hawk and the
newspapers got after us, we did not re-
fuse to fly because the reporters were
to be sent to US. They never came.
They took it for granted and watched
us from trees. We knew they were
there, for we saw them. /"
OF their subsequent improvements,
Mr.. Wright said:
"Our first work, with elders, show
, ed us only the principles of support and
balancing. We learned about shaping
the planes and then, for the first time,
we put the thick front rib ON our wings
E We learned something about
balancing, and in rivalry with the buzz
, yards we tried soaring. Our wings
proved better than theirs. We could
soar on lighter upper currents on the
hills than they. But we have found
! since that the power driven machine is
! entirely different from the glider. We
a had to unlearn some of the skill we had
h acquired in gliding after we began to
fly. We had to unlearn about as much
as we had learned. elders will not be
. used in learning to fly the perfected ma
chine. But we may some time build a
, glider with the right curves for soar
ing as sport"
: The Wright brothers are an interest
!, ing example of the force of heredity.
Their greatgrandfather, who was also
% the greatgrandfather of Miss Krout on
d the maternal side, was a man named
u Reeder, of English Quaker descent. He
& spent a large part of his fortune in ex'
perimenting with the unsolvable prob
" lem Of perpetual motion, mania shared
IL by some Of his sons.
IL In the fourth generation, exemplified
u in the Wright brothers, the taste fol
II weird mechanics was developed in the
b. form of experiments in aeronautics
IN Their first crude flying machines, some
Us years ago, were not more impracticablt
70 and visionary to the public mind thar
es the fruitless labors of their ancestor.