A year after the Wrights’ first meetings with Curtiss, in October, 1907, the Aerial Experiment Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell and others, with headquarters first in Nova Scotia and later at Hammondsport, N. Y., where Curtiss lived. He became “Director of Experiments.” This was the first time Curtiss had been directly connected with aviation except as a manufacturer of motors, and three months later, a letter he wrote to the Wrights indicated that motors rather than aviation were still his chief interest. “I just wish to keep in touch with you,” he wrote, “and let you know that we have been making considerable progress in engine construction.” After listing and describing the various engines he was building, he proposed to furnish to the Wrights “gratis” one of his fifty-horsepower engines. But the offer was not accepted. The letter mentioned that Captain Baldwin was a “permanent fixture in this establishment”--a fact not without importance, considering information that Baldwin was later to reveal. Further on in the letter, Curtiss told of Dr. Bell’s reading to the members of the Aerial Experiment Association the United States Government’s specifications for the purchase of a flying-machine, and added: “You, of course, are the only persons who could come anywhere near doing what is required.” About a fortnight after receipt of that letter from Curtiss, the Wrights got another letter dated January 15, 1908, written on Aerial Experiment Association stationery, and signed by Lieutenant T. Selfridge, whose name appeared on the letterhead as secretary of the association. (This was the same Selfridge who was killed a few months later in the tragic airplane accident at Fort Myer.) In that letter, Selfridge, on behalf of the Experiment Association, said: I am taking the liberty of writing you and asking your advice on certain points connected with gliding experiments, or rather glider construction, which we started here last Monday. Will you kindly tell me what results you obtained on the travel of the center of pressure both on aerocurves and aeroplanes? Also, what is a good, efficient method of constructing the ribs of the surfaces so that they will be light and yet strong enough to maintain their curvature under ordinary conditions, and a good means of fastening them to the cloth and upper lateral cords of the frame? I hope I am not imposing too much by asking you these questions. Supposing the information would be used only for scientific purposes, the Wrights obligingly replied at once as follows: You will find much of the information you desire in the addresses of our Mr. Wilbur Wright before the Western Society of Engineers, published in the Journals of the Society of December, 1901, and August, 1903.