Aeronautics -- United States -- Biography; Wright, Orville, 1871-1948; Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912
Shortly after they were established at Pau, the Wrights received a call
from a German, Captain Alfred Hildebrandt. This was not the first time
he had tried to see them. He had stopped in Dayton, on his way homeward
after attending the international balloon races at St. Louis, in 1907;
but on reaching Dayton he learned that the Wrights were in Europe.
Captain Hildebrandt came to Pau on behalf of a newspaper publisher.
His principal was Herr Scherl, owner of the _Lokal Anzeiger_, a
leading paper in Berlin. Scherl thought it would be a great stroke
of advertising for his paper if he could arrange for a big public
demonstration of a Wright machine, with the general public invited to
be the paper’s guests. It was arranged that one of the Wrights should
make a series of flights at Berlin, later that year, for a substantial
fee. The brothers later decided that the Berlin flights should be made
by Orville.
A move had been started in Italy to have demonstrations of the Wright
plane in Rome. Dr. Pirelli, Italian tire manufacturer, who had flown
with Wilbur Wright at Le Mans, was believed to have made the first
suggestion that led to organizing an aviation club at Rome to buy a
Wright plane. This “club” was supposed to be backed at least partly by
the Italian Government, and the arrangement with the Wrights provided
for the training of two lieutenants, one from the Navy, the other from
the Army.
Parts and material for six new planes had already been shipped to
Europe from Dayton, and the parts for one of these were sent to Pau,
where they were built into a complete machine. The machine was then
taken down in sections and shipped to Rome. (The one used in the French
flights became the personal property of Lazare Weiller, organizer of
the French Wright company, and later it went to a museum in Paris.)
In April the Wrights returned from Pau to Paris, and after a brief stay
there Wilbur went to Rome. He was joined there later by Orville and
Katharine, who went to a hotel opposite the Barberini Palace. Count and
Countess di Celleri, of the Italian nobility, had a cottage adjoining
their villa near the flying field at Centocelle, and they offered it to
Wilbur. Countess di Celleri later felt more than repaid when she had a
passenger flight in the Wright plane.
When the machine shipped from Pau in sections arrived in Rome it was
reassembled in an automobile factory, just outside the city limits, on
the Flaminian Way. It was then moved across the city on a truck drawn
by a magnificent team of gray horses to a military field in Centocelle.
As the strange-looking machine was carried through Roman streets past
ancient ruins, it is doubtful if amazed beholders had ever seen a
greater contrast between old and new.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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