Wright Brothers vs Glenn Curtiss: Patent Wars and the Birth of Aviation

Executive overview

The Wright brothers solved the ancient problem of human flight, then spent the rest of their lives trying to build a monopoly around it. Wilbur Wright drove himself to exhaustion fighting patent lawsuits while Glenn Curtiss kept building, innovating, and ultimately surpassing him.

The feud between Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtiss pitted an intuitive genius against a prolific builder — and the builder won.

Obsession with destroying a competitor can destroy the obsessed.

The two rivals

• Wilbur Wright: intuitive theoretician, made spectacular intellectual leaps to solve problems that had eluded history's greatest minds
• Glenn Curtiss: master craftsman and applied scientist — "Fermi to Wilbur's Einstein"
• Both came to aviation via bicycle racing and repair; both were obsessive, serious, and refused to take a step backward in confrontation
• Curtiss held a world land speed record of 136 mph on a motorized bicycle in 1907 — and piloted it himself
• His path into aviation: built superior motorcycle engines, then mounted them on early aircraft frames
• Curtiss never left the factory floor; he was an engineer and inventor first, businessman second

Otto Lilienthal and the ancient problem

• Lilienthal spent 30 years taking thousands of measurements of surfaces moving through air — the most sophisticated aerodynamicist of his day
• Wilbur Wright called him "easily the most important" of all who attacked the flying problem
• Lilienthal died in 1896 after stalling 50 feet up and breaking his spine; his last words: "sacrifices must be made"
• His death left a void — on that day, Wilbur decided to fill it
• Achieving flight was a puzzle solved piece by torturous piece over centuries; Aristotle, Archimedes, Leonardo, and Newton all failed

Octave Chanute: the catalyst

• Chanute never built a successful flying machine, yet was arguably the most important person in aviation's gestation
• Compiled all experimental knowledge into a book, Progress in Flying Machines, which fertilized the field
• Corresponded with every serious experimenter globally, acting as a central node connecting people who didn't know each other existed
• Would the Wright brothers have solved the problem without Chanute? "That is not at all clear."

Wilbur's breakthrough method

• Read everything first — three years of self-education before attempting experiments
• Found his first breakthrough by doing the exact opposite of competitors: where others tried to prevent roll, Wilbur embraced it
• Observed that birds twist wingtips to maintain lateral control — the best stability is inherent instability
• The same method works in business: map everything competitors do for customer acquisition, then draw an X through all of it

The cast of early aviation

• Thomas Scott Baldwin: tightrope-walker turned parachute inventor, charged a dollar a foot for public jumps — never patented his invention deliberately
• John Moissant: failed three times to overthrow the government of El Salvador, then became the world's preeminent aviator within months; his sister on his zero-margin flight paths: "My brother doesn't fly to land, he flies to win"
• Lincoln Beachey: possibly the greatest aviator ever; 20 million Americans saw him perform in person — one quarter of the US population
• Harriet Quimby: first woman to receive a pilot's license and first to cross the English Channel
• One pilot died every 10 days in aviation's first years; most fatalities involved no crash — pilots were simply flung out of open aircraft

Wright brothers' key mistakes

• Refused to demo the product publicly: required a signed contract before any demonstration, expecting buyers to purchase without seeing it fly
• Underestimated the competition: "no lead is insurmountable if you stop running before you've reached the finish line"
• Closed themselves off from outside talent, including Curtiss's superior motors
• Pursued nine patent lawsuits, winning all of them — but the lawsuits never stopped competitors, only exhausted Wilbur
• Wilbur admitted he had worked harder fighting Curtiss than developing the Wright Flyer itself
• When confronted by the McCormick-Rockefeller committee (who controlled Chicago's newspapers and had unlimited resources), Orville backed down — Wilbur overruled him, prolonging a fight with opponents who couldn't be beaten

You cannot make a good deal with a bad person

• Augustus Herring: presented himself to Curtiss as holding prior patents on aircraft stability and having financial backers — both lies
• Curtiss formed the Herring-Curtiss Company, putting up almost all the money while Herring received most of the stock
• Herring disappeared repeatedly when asked to produce the patents that did not exist
• The resulting bankruptcy locked Curtiss out of the factory he had built with his own hands
• The losses from the Herring partnership were still being resolved after both men were dead — costing Curtiss's heirs $500,000

Curtiss wins by endurance

• While Wilbur was consumed by lawsuits, Curtiss kept building and innovating
• Designed the first seaplane, the first retractable landing gear, the twist-grip motorcycle throttle, the enclosed cockpit, and the first military and civilian flying schools
• His NC-4 was the first aircraft to fly across the Atlantic
• By World War One, his two factories produced over 10,000 planes; he retired in his late 40s with approximately $30 million
• Orville sold the Wright Company for roughly $1.5 million; the two companies merged in 1929 — the combined entity, Curtiss-Wright, still exists today

The lesson Wilbur never grasped

• "Wilbur never seemed to grasp that his desire to destroy his nemesis could destroy him as well"
• Months before his death from typhoid at 45, Wilbur wrote: "if I could get free from the business with the money we already have in hand I would do it"
• Luminescent intelligence in one area does not preclude gross incompetence in another; genius often requires arrogance, so brilliant people repeatedly blunder in their blind spots
• Steve Jobs: "I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"