In 1914, after a bitter court battle between the Wrights and Glenn H. Curtiss over which of them should be recognized as ‘pioneers in the practical art of flying with heavier-than-air machines’-which the Wrights won-the Curtiss company was permitted to take Langley’s original 1903 machine from the Smithsonian to the Curtiss test site at Hammondsport, N.Y. The intent was to make tests to justify the Smithsonian’s long-standing recognition of the Langley aircraft, thereby invalidating the Wrights’ newly won title of pioneers. The Smithsonian paid Curtiss $2,000 toward the expenses of the tests.

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In the March 1928 issue of U.S. Air Services magazine, Orville Wright wrote: ‘It [the Smithsonian] published false and misleading reports of Curtiss’ tests of the machine at Hammondsport, leading people to believe that the original Langley machine, which had failed to fly in 1903, had been flown successfully at Hammondsport in 1914, without material change. These reports were published in spite of the fact that many changes, several of fundamental importance, had been made at Hammondsport.’ Twenty years later, in 1948, the Wright Flyer was returned to its homeland where it has been an extremely popular exhibit ever since. And Kill Devil Hill, N.C. (a state whose automobile license plates assert ‘First in Flight’), has become a mecca for millions of tourists and aviation buffs.

Despite rumors of an agreement between the Smithsonian and the Wright estate, an actual contract remained elusive. O’Dwyer noted that during a 1969 conversation with Paul Garber, then the NASM’s curator of early aircraft, Garber denied that any such agreement existed, adding that he ‘could never agree to such a thing.’

Then came, as O’Dwyer expressed it, ‘a whole new ball game.’ On June 29, 1975, at an annual dinner meeting of international museum directors at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, CAHA officers overheard a loud argument between Louis Casey, then a NASM curator, and Harold S. Miller, an executor of the Wright estate. During the argument, Miller used the word ‘contract’ three times. Casey had mentioned that the wording of the label on the Wright Flyer was to undergo a change. Miller heatedly insisted it could not be changed ‘by contract.’ Miller won.

Learning of the public mention of a contract from CAHA veteran Harvey Lippincott, O’Dwyer renewed his efforts to obtain a copy of the agreement, which he had long suspected might be a key to NASM’s reticence about Whitehead. Letters and visits between O’Dwyer and Senator Lowell Weicker, Jr., of Connecticut, plus senatorial clout and the Freedom of Information Act, were required to extract a copy of the contract from the Smithsonian. The agreement was dated November 23, 1948. One of two signers for the Wright estate was Harold S. Miller and, ‘for the United States of America,’ A. Wetmore, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

The clause insisted upon by Orville reads: ‘Neither the Smithsonian Institution nor its successors nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered by the United States of America, by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight.’ Thus did the Wrights nail down their place in history. Commenting on the contract, O’Dwyer observed recently: ‘The Smithsonian has no authority to represent the people of the United States in any contract if it compromises history. They overstep and abuse their power, especially when they engage in political engineering of this sort.’

Even before the public mention of a contract at the June 1975 dinner meeting, the CAHA was unearthing new facts related to the Whitehead controversy. In a letter to Donald Lopez, assistant director for aeronautics of the NASM, dated January 28, 1974, Harvey Lippincott, president emeritus of the CAHA, stated: ‘I have attached a copy of a letter I have written to Paul Garber regarding our discovery of a new witness to the flights of Gustave Whitehead….Owing to the advanced age (94) of the witness, expediency is urged….The new witness lived next door to Whitehead in 1901–1903, and described a public flight before many neighbors…prior to 1903, from all indications. We urgently request your presence on Saturday, February 2, at 10 a.m., for a recorded interview with this witness.’

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