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LOCOMOTIVE TO AEROMOTIVE
Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution
By SIMINE SHORT
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03631-6
Foreword
Octave Chanute and "The Course of Human Progress"
OCTAVE CHANUTE DIED in his home at 1138 Dearborn Avenue on the morning of Wednesday, November 23, 1910. The family immediately wired the news to Wilbur Wright, who boarded a train in Dayton, Ohio, in order to reach Chicago in time for the funeral, scheduled to take place at 4 p.m. on Friday, November 25. It is safe to assume that he spent much of that trip considering his complex relationship with Chanute, which had begun with a single letter more than ten years before.
"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man," Wright had written to introduce himself to Chanute on May 13, 1900. "My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life." Chanute understood completely, having himself been infected by the flying machine bug a quarter-century before. He responded on May 17, remarking that he was "quite in sympathy" with Wilbur Wright's desire to begin aeronautical experiments, and offering advice on some publications that might prove useful.
Sixty-eight years old in the spring of 1900, Octave Chanute was one of the most successful and distinguished civil engineers in the nation. He began his career in 1849 as a chainman on a surveying crew, the lowest rung on the professional ladder. Over the decades that followed, he worked his way up to a position as chief engineer with a series of railroads that were opening the West and binding the nation together. He bridged great rivers, built the stockyards in Kansas City and Chicago, pioneered wood preservation, helped plan an elevated railway system for New York City, and supervised engineering projects that would serve the needs of urban dwellers in the new western cities.
Perhaps because he had learned his skills on the job, Chanute was dedicated to fostering professional standards and a spirit of cooperation and information sharing among engineers. During the course of his long career, he served as both vice president and president of the American Society of Civil Engineers and as president of the Western Society of Engineers. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chanute received honors from such international organizations as the Institute of Civil Engineers of Great Britain and the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers.
As Wilbur Wright knew, Chanute had for some years been taking time from his professional duties and obligations to pursue the great interest of his life—heavier-than-air flight. Originally attracted to the field by his observations of the impact of high winds on bridges and roofed structures, he quickly shifted his attention to the possibility of achieving winged flight. True to form, Chanute set out to read what had been written on the subject, and to make contact with a handful of experimenters scattered around the globe who were working toward the development of a practical airplane.
Within a few years, Chanute stood at the center of an informal international community of flying machine experimenters and enthusiasts. He shared the information that he gathered with other workers in the field, and offered encouragement, advice, and occasionally even financial aid. Emerging as an international authority in the field, Chanute lectured on the subject, wrote articles for professional journals, and published Progress in Flying Machines (1894), a book that quickly became the "bible" for aeronautical experimenters everywhere. His efforts not only illuminated the field, but established aeronautics as an acceptable area of study for professional engineers.
Not content with his mastery of flight theory, Chanute funded the design and construction of a number of gliders, the best of which were test flown by his younger associates during trials that he supported in the sand dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, east of Chicago, in the summer of 1896. When Wilbur Wright wrote to Chanute for the first time four years later, he had no doubt that he was addressing the world's authority in flying machine studies.
From the outset, Octave Chanute served an essential role as a source of information and a sounding board for the Wright brothers' ideas. His encouragement in the fall of 1901 convinced the brothers to continue their work at a time when they might otherwise have abandoned the field. And it was Chanute who spread word of their successes in 1902 and 1903 to the rest of the world, igniting new interest in heavier-than-air flight in France and elsewhere in Europe.
Tensions began to grow between Octave Chanute and the Wright brothers after 1903. For their part, the Wrights believed that their old friend had portrayed them as his "pupils" in his talks with the Europeans, and that he failed to understand or appreciate the originality and importance of their ideas and achievements. Chanute, disturbed when the Wrights brought suit against their rivals for patent infringement, suggested that "the desire for great wealth" had warped their "usual sound judgment," and he remarked that his old friends had failed to appreciate "such aid as I may have furnished." The hard feelings continued to fester into the spring of 1910, when Wilbur wrote a warm and conciliatory note to Chanute: "My brother and I do not form many intimate friendships," he began, "and do not lightly give them up. I believe that unless we could understand exactly how you felt, and you could understand how we felt, our friendship would tend to grow weaker instead of stronger. Through ignorance or thoughtlessness, each would be touching the other's sore spots and causing unnecessary pain. We prize too highly the friendship which meant so much to us in the years of our early struggles to see it worn away by uncorrected misunderstandings, which might be corrected by a frank discussion."
Chanute took a step back, as well, explaining that he planned a trip to Europe, after which, "I hope ... that we will be able to resume our former relations." But his hopes did not materialize. Chanute died before the men resolved their differences, and now Wilbur was on his way to his old friend's funeral, where the family invited him to give the eulogy. "By the death of Mr. O. Chanute," he began, "the world has lost one whose labors had to an unusual degree influenced the course of human progress. If he had not lived the entire history of progress in flying would have been other than it has been...."
Wilbur Wright offered praise for his friend's technical contributions, noting that the biplane glider that Chanute had designed in 1896 would "... influence flying machine design so long as flying machines are made." He focused, however, on the human qualities that had enabled the engineer to forge a community of experimenters that laid the foundation for the invention of the airplane:
His writings were so lucid as to provide intelligent understanding of the nature of the problems of flight to a vast number of persons who would probably never have given the matter study otherwise, and not only by published articles, but by personal correspondence and visitation, he inspired and encouraged to the limits of his ability all who were devoted to the work. His private correspondence with experimenters in all parts of the world was of great volume. No one was too humble to receive a share of his time. In patience and goodness of heart he has rarely been surpassed. Few men were more universally respected and loved.
We have waited a long time for a solid biography of Octave Chanute. Simine Short has given us a book worth waiting for. She succeeds in situating the details of Chanute's long life and extraordinary career squarely in the context of his time.
As the author demonstrates, there was far more to the man than his contributions to aeronautics and his involvement in the Wright brothers' work. The nineteenth century was the age of the engineer. Technical professionals revolutionized transportation and industry, reshaping the economy, society, and everyday life in the process. There are far too few biographies of the engineers who managed that revolution. Chanute was one of those men. He came of age in the era of the canal builders and died having helped give birth to the air age. Chanute spent most of his working life as one of the technical professionals who managed the creation of the American railroad network, and on the design and construction of the bridges, stockyards, and other facilities that supported the railroads.
Beyond that, few men were more committed to the establishment of engineering as a profession on par with law or medicine. Chanute devoted much time and energy to the newly established professional societies created to set standards and serve the needs of civil engineers. He firmly believed in the importance of sharing information with other professionals. Chanute wrote countless letters to colleagues, published articles on a wide range of issues in professional journals, lectured, arranged programs for the annual meetings of professional organizations, and represented the engineering profession on the committees planning Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.
Simine Short has done a great service in providing this well-rounded and detailed account of one of the outstanding engineering careers of the nineteenth century. I feel certain that Wilbur and Orville Wright would approve, as well, for the author also underscores the personal qualities that led the inventors of the airplane to describe their old friend as "universally respected and loved." In short, this is a biography that not only fills a gap in the history of technology, but is a book worthy of its subject.
Tom D. Crouch Senior Curator, Aeronautics National Air and Space Museum Smithsonian Institution
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Excerpted from LOCOMOTIVE TO AEROMOTIVE by SIMINE SHORT Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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