again fell into the river. Rescuers pulled Manly unhurt from the water each time. Langley blamed the calamities on a problem with the launch mechanism, not the aircraft. The real problem lay in his failure to consider the problems of calculating stress on an airframe and correct control of an aircraft. He made no further tests, and his experiments became the object of scorn in newspapers and the U.S. Congress. Nine days after the December 8, 1903, failure, the Wright brothers conducted four successful flights near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. 1914 modification and flight tests At the Smithsonian's instigation, Glenn Curtiss extensively modified the Aerodrome in an attempt to bypass the Wright brothers' patent on aircraft and to vindicate Langley. He reduced the wing area and aspect ratio and strengthened its structure, and modified the tail to act in the conventional way. He also upgraded the power train, replacing the ignition and cooling systems and fitting new propellers designed after the Wright pattern. Finally, he added floats to operate from the water surface and lowered the centre of mass by about . He made a few short hops in it in 1914, none lasting more than a few seconds. Based on these flights, the Smithsonian displayed the Aerodrome in its museum as the first heavier-than-air crewed, powered aircraft "capable of flight." The attempt at deception misfired. Their action triggered a feud with Orville Wright (Wilbur Wright had died in 1912), who accused the Smithsonian of misrepresenting flying machine history. Orville backed up his protest by refusing to donate the original 1903 Wright Flyer to the Smithsonian, instead loaning it to the extensive collections of the Science Museum of London in 1928. The dispute finally ended in 1942 when the Smithsonian published details of the Curtiss modifications to the Aerodrome and recanted its claims for the aircraft. Curtiss called the preparations "restoration" claiming that the only addition to the design was pontoons to support testing on the lake, but critics, including patent attorney Griffith Brewer, called them alterations of the original design. In a June 22, 1914, letter to The New York Times, Brewer asked "Why, if the Langley flying machine was a practical flying machine, did not those in charge of the machine try to fly it without alteration?" Brewer also questioned the decision to allow someone who had been found guilty of patent infringement to be chosen to prepare