Back on 1907, Glenn Curtiss had set an impressive, but unofficial, speed record of 136.27 mph (219.31 km/h). A number of attempts were been made down the years to exceed this speed with an official timing but it wasn’t until this day in 1930 that Joseph S Wright managed it, achieving 137.23 mph (220.99 km/h) on his OEC-Temple JAP in Arapjon, France.
Intervieved after his record-breaking run, Wright was asked about coping with the wind pressure:
“The pressure is so much that when you look up your head is pushed backwards; you feel it in your neck. There must be quite a lot of speed lost, and after the attempt I decided that it would be well worth while having a streamlined crash helmet next time.
If you sit up slightly instead of lying right down to it, or let yourself go loose, instantly you feel the machine go down in speed; the wind is so terrific.
The arms must be kept close in and, if possible, the toes kept up instead of down. Why I tape up my clothes is simply to lessen this windage. With your clothes loose you can feel the wind plucking at you, and I suppose a loose or open shirt would be torn off. I take the precaution of taping up the neck of my overalls and fitting my crash helmet over them, no that there shall not be the slightest possibility of their ballooning.
Some people ask why I wear overalls instead of the usual leather clothes, but the trouble is that leathers are too bulky to allow one to lie down to it properly. If anything were to happen and you were wearing leathers there would be more chance of your getting away with only bruises, but in an event like an attempt on the maximum speed record one has necessarily to take some risks. in this direction. I think if one were to ride in just bathing slips and. a pair of shoes there would be an appreciable increase in speed, but it would be rather uncomfortable, though; flies and bumblebees aren’t soft.
The tendency is for the air to lift the rider off the saddle, because it tries to get between his body and the tank. Riding ‘on the footrests’ and, of course, the few bumps there are on the Arpajon road, also help this tendency. My practice is to get my body right down when I have opened up to about half-throttle in the flying start. It would be impossible to sit op on the machine at a much larger throttle opening, and I don’t think that if one gave the machine full throttle when sitting up one could ever manage to lie down to it, so strong is the wind.”
Images L-R:
Wright poses for the press.
Arrangement of the Powerplus supercharger, which is mounted in front of the engine and drives by chain from the crankshaft. The special Amal carburetter is fixed between the front engine plates.
The unit can develop over 84bhp, transmitted by a Sturmey-Archer gear box with ratios of approximately 3, 5 and 7 to 1.
The highest part of the machine—the steering damper control—is 35 inches…the saddle top is 28 inches from the ground.
