The History: Octave Chanute has been travelling in Europe with his daughters. Now in France, Chanute speaks to members of the Aero Club of France. One of the subjects he will discuss is the St. Louis Exposition (World's Fair) which will be held in 1904. There will be an aerial contest and the main prize is $100,000! Many inventors and experimenters like the Wrights are interested in the contest.

However, the evening of April 2nd Chanute's presentation centered on his own and the Wrights' glider experiments. In the presentation Chanute inferred that he was the mentor [teacher] and the Wrights were his students. Ernest Archdeacon a wealthy French lawyer interested in aeronautics and other fast vehicles [at that time bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles and balloons] reported in La Locomotion that since Chanute was older he had trained young pupils to carry on his gliding experiments and in particular Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio. In La Locomotion and in the April issue of the French journal L'Aerophile [aeronautics lover or enthusiast] the Wrights 1902 glider was labeled "the Chanute machine".

As well in the talk Chanute discussed the Wrights 3-axis control mechanism. This was an unfortunate breach in confidentiality. Numerous times, Chanute had encouraged the Wrights to patent their inventions. Now Chanute had revealed some of these secrets and made the information public.

French experimenters now began developing machines which looked like the Wright brothers. However, no one in France was able to create the Wrights' mechanism based on Chanute's description.

Although the Wrights filed a patent application on March 23rd and will be protected in the United States, their invention will not be protected in all of the European countries due to Chanute's disclosure of this information on April 2nd.

Clearly, the Wrights had never been "students" of Octave Chanute and developed their successful gliders independently of any of Chanute's designs. This incident and a few other differences in opinion will form a rift in the Wrights' friendship with Chanute.

In the same article in La Locomotion, Archdeacon also include an abstract of a letter from Captain Ferdinand Ferber. "... I permit myself to write and ask you to use your influence in the Aero-Club to have it establish as soon as possible a prize for distance for gliding machines.

"From experience with the automobile, we know that it is races which improve engines, and the aeroplane must not be allowed to be perfected in America ....", wrote Ferber.