Chicago, May 7, 1904
I have yours of 5th, and I thank you heartily for the invitation to witness your forthcoming experiments. I am, however, now building two tie treating plants, and may not be able to get away on a fixed date.
I enclose a French clipping which please return. Archdeacon seems to have obtained very short glides, and is going to rebuild his apparatus. He states that I did not furnish enough information. I have a letter from Drzewiecki who states that his machine will not be completed for months, as he is going to St. Petersburg on naval affairs.
I have a letter from Nimfuhr in Vienna, who says that Alexander has lately been there and said that some American aviators, whose name he would not give, "have done very much better than the Wright brothers." What does that mean?
I have advised Major Moedebeck that the pictures of your machine which he republished from the N.Y. Herald are not correct, and that the notices which his New York correspondent sent him of Herring are given to a man who attempted blackmail.
Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, May 15, 1904