George A. Spratt story by Bill Wolfe, edited by Johan Visschedijk

Dr. George A. Spratt, a medical school graduate, developed a health problem preventing him from practicing medicine so he took an interest in aerodynamics and became a close friend of Octave Chanute at the Smithsonian Institution. They concentrated their developments and experiments in the very important and more difficult area of stability and control after getting relative easy airborne. Dr. Spratt made extensive observations of the wings of birds, bees and insects to develop his early elementary understanding of nature's subtle solutions to the stability and control of flying creatures. Dr. Spratt and Chanute were intrigued by the efforts of Wilbur and Orville Wright and offered their free assistance. Dr. Spratt and Chanute visited Kitty Hawk frequently and eventually Dr. Spratt became their primary aeronautical consultant. They did not agree with the Wright's complicated three control approach and suggested simpler Controlwing design features which the Wright's rejected, but Dr. Spratt helped them do it their way anyway. After introducing them to his own elaborate wind tunnel and instruments that measured both lift and drag, the Wright's were later able to copy them and use them for their own experiments. Dr. Spratt and Chanute delivered a large Controlwing glider of their own design to Kitty Hawk. It was successfully flown and offered to the Wright's for continued testing but they abandoned it due to the weather. Had they continued testing it, surely aviation history may have been quite different and many lives would have been saved. The Wright's believed that very elaborate pilot training was superior to the built-in design safety features such as those in the Controlwing. Wilbur and Orville were more than willing to accept Dr. Spratt's volunteer technical assistance but were not willing to share their celebrity or any potential financial gains. They rarely acknowledged him or his important design changes which helped lead to their ultimate success; however they never hesitated to call on him as an expert witness for many patent suites years later. Still it took fourteen years for Dr. Spratt to get his own Controlwing related patents because the patent office officials consistently could not understand such a different concept from other existing aircraft. The Wright's have been given much undue credit for single-handedly developing the first successful aircraft, but Dr. Spratt's volunteer technical assistance and design changes played a significant part in their ultimate success though he is rarely mentioned in early history books. During their lifetime the Wright's censored all articles, speeches and publications to exclude other names of persons who actually aided them in their quest to fly. Donald C. Paulson wrote a very detailed article about the connection between Dr. Spratt and the Wright's that ended in 1909. This article is at georgespratt.org, the very informative memorial site dedicated to Dr. George A. Spratt (who died on November 26, 1934, at the age of 64) and to his son George G. Spratt (born 1904, died 1998), an aeronautical engineer who perpetuated the work on the Controlwing principle.