Silk, a biplane and 71 minutes: Air cargo turns 116

Air cargo turned 116 this weekend. On Saturday, 7 November, the industry marked the anniversary of the day a Wright Model B biplane flew a consignment of silk from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio. The 1910 flight is widely recognised as the first-time goods were shipped by aeroplane for a paying customer.

At the controls was Philip Orin Parmalee, one of the pilots trained by the Wright brothers themselves. He took off from the Wrights' Huffman Prairie flying field near Dayton on the morning of Monday, 7 November 1910. He landed at the Driving Park in Columbus a little over an hour later.

"It was the first time cargo was shipped by airplane," notes the Ohio History Connection, the state's historical society, which holds a piece of the silk in its collection today.

A retailer's big idea
The idea came from a shopkeeper, not an aviator. According to the Ohio History Connection, Max Morehouse, president of the Morehouse-Martens Company, a Columbus dry goods retailer, saw the commercial potential of aeroplanes after reading about Glenn Curtiss's successful flight from Sandusky to Cleveland, Ohio.

Morehouse contacted Orville and Wilbur Wright. He asked whether they could deliver a bolt of ribbon from the Elder & Johnston Co., a Dayton wholesaler, to his store in Columbus.

Roy Knabenshue, general manager of the Wrights' exhibition department, drew up a contract between the two companies. Under it, the Wright Company agreed to supply a plane and pilot for a fee of US$5,000. That fee made the trip a paid commercial delivery rather than a demonstration flight.

Take-off at Huffman Prairie
Newspaper reports from 1910, republished by the Dayton Daily News, give a detailed picture of the morning. Orville Wright and his sister Katharine went out to the field on the 9 o’clock car. The same car brought the silk to be flown. The reports say the silk had been sent from New York to Dayton.

About 500 people watched the departure. The biplane left the ground at 10:37 am. Parmalee made a semi-circular flight of the field and crossed its eastern fence at exactly 10:39, a reporter wrote, calling the start “a magnificent one”.

The aircraft did not fly alone. P M Jacobs, a Wright Company mechanic, followed it by road in a car with tools, three Columbus newspapermen and a photographer. They drove from the airfield to Yellow Springs Road and on to Columbus.

A photograph from the day, held by the Ohio History Connection, shows Parmalee seated in the aircraft with the packages of fabric strapped beside him, while Orville Wright oils the Model B’s engine.

The Model B was a biplane, an aircraft with two main wings, one mounted above the other and braced with wooden struts and wires. Built of wood, wire and fabric, early biplanes used the double wing to get more lift and strength from light materials. There was no cockpit or cabin: the pilot sat in the open on the lower wing, with the cargo travelling right alongside him.

71 minutes to Columbus
Parmalee landed in Columbus at 11:50 am after a continuous cross-country flight, according to the 1910 report. He held an altitude of about 1,000 feet throughout. Some accounts say he followed the old National Road via South Charleston and London.

The contemporary report put the trip at 62 miles in one hour and eleven minutes. Parmalee himself said he flew about 65 miles in all. The Ohio History Connection also records 65 miles and 71 minutes, from Huffman Prairie to the Driving Park. Some later accounts give an official time of 57 minutes.

The Wright camp was quick to claim a record. Knabenshue, by then manager of the Wright fliers, said Parmalee had broken the world's cross-country speed record. By his reckoning Parmalee averaged 69 miles per hour, since "he went out of his way in getting here". That figure was Knabenshue's own estimate; 65 miles in 71 minutes works out to about 55 mph.

Whichever figure is used, the aeroplane made the trip faster than the express train between the two cities, which was the point of the exercise.

What was on board
The exact size of the world’s first air cargo consignment depends on which source you read. A 1910 newspaper report described “the world’s first freight aeroplane” leaving Huffman Prairie with five bolts of silk, weighing 47 pounds (about 21 kg), consigned to Morehouse-Martens, “retail dry goods merchants, Columbus”.

The Ohio History Connection gives a fuller account, but its numbers differ. It records ten bolts in two packages: one held a single bolt of dark pink silk, secured to Parmalee’s left during the flight, and the other held nine bolts in assorted colours. It puts the total weight at about 70 pounds (about 32 kg).

 A city takes notice
The stunt worked as publicity well before the plane took off. Scores of letters poured in to Morehouse-Martens once the contract was announced, the 1910 report said. "Women by the dozen have written asking for the privilege of riding in the aeroplane," it noted, "and there are plenty of men as well, who have ambitions in the flying line."

The Columbus chamber of commerce also backed the event, recognising "what a good thing this 'Aviation Day' is for Columbus".

The silk itself became a keepsake. According to the Ohio History Connection, the package of pink silk was cut into pieces after the flight and attached to commemorative cards. The organisation holds one of these cards in its collection.

The 'Skyman' and his legacy
Parmalee's career was short and eventful. In 1911 he flew some of the first US military reconnaissance flights along the Mexican border. The same year he piloted the aircraft from which Grant Morton made the earliest known parachute jump from an aeroplane, over Venice Beach, California.

Nicknamed "Skyman", Parmalee died in a crash at an air show in Yakima, Washington, on 1 June 1912. He was 25.

As the Ohio History Connection observes, "it would be years before commercial air shipments were financially feasible". Still, the basic logic of the Dayton–Columbus flight has held for 116 years: shippers pay a premium to fly goods that are valuable and time-sensitive.

That single consignment of silk was the starting point for an industry that, by International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) estimates, now carries around a third of world trade by value.