page_title: Wright brothers patent war
section_title: Prior art
hierarchical_section_title: Wright brothers patent war / Prior art
caption_attribution_description: Le 14-bis de Alberto Santos Dumont avec, en arrière-plan, le Blériot IV. [Collection Jules Beau. Photographie sportive]&#160;: T. 33. Années 1906 et 1907 / Jules Beau&#160;: F. 15. [Les étapes de l\ aviation. Nouveau triomphe de Santos-Dumont. 12 novembre 1906];
context_page_description: The Wright brothers patent war centers on the patent they received for their method of an airplane's flight control. The Wright brothers were two Americans who are widely credited with inventing and building the world's first flyable airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903.
  In 1906, the Wrights received a patent for their method of flight control which they fiercely defended for years afterward, suing foreign and domestic aviators and companies, especially another U.S. aviation pioneer, Glenn Curtiss, in an attempt to collect licensing fees.
  Even after Wilbur Wright had died, and Orville Wright had retired in 1916, the patent war continued, and even expanded, as other manufacturers launched lawsuits of their own—creating a growing crisis in the U.S. aviation industry.
  The patent war stalled development of the U.S. aviation industry. As a consequence, airplane development in the United States fell so far behind Europe that in World War I American pilots were forced to fly European combat aircraft, instead. After the war began, the U.S.
context_section_description: There are conflicting claims over who first invented the aileron as a method for lateral flight control. In 1868, before the advent of powered,  heavier-than-air aircraft — and within eleven years distant in time from the birth of all three of the involved parties in the American lawsuit — English inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton first patented ailerons. Boulton's patent, No. 392, awarded in 1868 some 40 years before ailerons were 'reinvented', became forgotten until the aileron was in general use. Aviation historian Charles Gibbs-Smith wrote in 1956 that if Boulton's ailerons had been revealed at the time of the Wright Brothers' patent filings, the brothers might not have been able to claim priority of invention for lateral control of flying machines. U.S. District Judge John R. Hazel, who heard the Wright lawsuit against Curtiss, found to the contrary, ruling in 1913 that Boulton's "assertions and suggestions were altogether too conjectural to teach others how to reduce them to practice, and therefore his patent is not anticipatory."
  American John J. Montgomery invented and experimented with controllable spring-loaded trailing edge "flaps" on his second glider (1885) for roll control. Roll control was later expanded on his third glider (1886) to rotation of the entire wing as a wingeron. Later, Montgomery independently devised a system for wing warping, using model gliders first and then man-carrying machines with wing warping as early as 1903 through 1905 such as those used on The Santa Clara glider (1905). Montgomery patented this system of wing warping at precisely the same time as the Wrights, and was routinely requested during the middle of the Wright Brothers patent war to make the Montgomery patent available more broadly to other aviators for the specific purpose of avoiding the Wright Brothers' patent.
  New Zealander Richard Pearse may have made a powered flight in a monoplane that included small ailerons as early as 1902, but his claims are controversial (and sometimes inconsistent), and, even by his own reports, his aircraft were not well controlled.
  Robert Esnault-Pelterie, a Frenchman, built a Wright-style glider in 1904 that used ailerons in lieu of wing-warping. Although Boulton had described and patented ailerons in 1868, no one had actually built them until Esnault-Pelterie's glider, almost 40 years later.
  The Santos-Dumont 14-bis canard biplane was modified to add ailerons in late 1906, though it was never fully controllable in flight, likely due to its unconventional surfaces arrangement. Henri Farman's single-acting ailerons on the Farman III were the first to resemble ailerons on modern aircraft, and have a reasonable claim as the ancestor of the modern aileron. The Blériot VIII, the first aircraft to ever use what became the modern joystick and rudder "bar"-based aircraft flight control system, used wingtip ailerons for its roll control in its flights in France in 1908.
  In 1908, U.S. inventor, businessman and engine builder Glenn Curtiss flew an aileron-controlled aircraft. Curtiss was a member of the Aerial Experiment Association, headed by Alexander Graham Bell. The Association developed ailerons for their June Bug aircraft, in which Curtiss made the first officially recognized kilometer-plus flight in the U.S. In 1911, the AEA's version of ailerons received a patent.
caption: 14-bis in November 1906, with its ailerons
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