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Santos-Dumont, the son of a wealthy coffee planter, traveled to France to study engineering, and he soon became fascinated by flight. His first balloon design was the Brazil, which he flew in 1898. However, he quickly turned his attention to powered airships. A total of 11 dirigibles emerged from Santos-Dumont’s workshop over the next decade.
Santos-Dumont then progressed to powered heavier-than-air machines and on 23 October 1906 flew about 60 metres at a height of two to three metres with the fixed-wing 14-bis (also dubbed the Oiseau de proie —"bird of prey") at the Bagatelle Gamefield in Paris, taking off unassisted by an external launch system.
110 years ago, exactly today, the first officially observed flight in Europe that was longer than 25m was performed in Paris (FRA) by the Brazilian Aviation Pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, resident in France and famous for his experiments with small airships and balloons.
His steam-powered airship flew 17 miles (27 kilometers) from Paris to Élancourt, France. Several decades would pass before an airship could navigate in even a light wind. Alberto Santos-Dumont
- Early Life in Brazil
- Making A Life For Himself in Paris, France
- Alberto Santos-Dumont’S First Balloon Flight
- The Santos-Dumont No. 1-3
- Innovating to Win, Ending in Failure
- The Santos-Dumont No. 6 and The Deustch de La Meurthe
- Sabotage
- Achieving Heavier-Than-Air Flight in The No. 14-bis
- Who Really Made The First Heavier-Than-Air Flight?
- Building The First Practical Ultralight Aircraft
The youngest son of a wealthy Brazilian coffee mogul, Alberto Santos-Dumont was born on July 20, 1873, in the village of Cabangu, Brazil. From a young age, Alberto was intrigued by the tractors and other machines used on the coffee plantation in his youth, and after reading more than his fair share of Jules Vernebecame obsessed with the concept of ...
One of the first things Alberto did on arrival in Paris in 1891 was to arrange for a flight in a balloon. However, upon finding out it would cost 1,200 francs for a two-hour flight, he decided against the flight, saying, “If I risk 1,200 francs for an afternoon’s pleasure I shall find it either good or bad. If it is bad, the money will be lost. If ...
Alberto met Alexis Machuron and took off from Vaugirard, Paris and flew the balloon for two hours and 100km, eventually coming down at the Château de Ferrières. It was love at first flight. Alberto and Machuron took a train back to Paris, during which Alberto enthused about balloons, and ordered one to be constructed by Machuron and Lachambre for h...
On September 18, 1898, Alberto took his dirigible, the Santos-Dumont No. 1on its maiden voyage. Unfortunately, due to the small ballonet being unable to maintain the rigidity of the envelope, the No. 1 crashed on its second flight two days later. His second dirigible design, the No. 2 was abandoned after its first flight on May 11, 1899, due to des...
By the time Alberto was ready to move on to the No. 4, the No. 3 had been flown successfully a number of times, bolstering Alberto’s confidence in the concept of the dirigible. The No. 4, again, differed greatly from its predecessors as it was fitted with a tractor propeller in front of the keel, as well as a bicycle saddle for the pilot’s seat, bu...
Never one to be deterred by failure, Alberto immediately began construction on the No. 6, the airship that would earn him considerable fame across all of Europe. Essentially the same design as the No. 5, with a larger envelope, and the kinks worked out, Alberto and his No. 6 would go on to complete the race between the Aero-Club de France and Eiffe...
One of the best-known aviators at the time, Alberto was invited to travel to America to compete in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in which any style of flying machine had to make three laps of a 24km course at an average speed of 24km/h (15mph), and land, undamaged within 46m of the finish line. He was also invited to meet President Roosevelt i...
Alberto would continue designing and building dirigibles for most of his life but soon switched his primary focus from non-rigid airships to heavier-than-air flight. By 1905, Alberto had finished his first fixed-wing aircraft, as well as a primitive rotorcraft. On October 23, 1906, Alberto took the No. 14-bis on a 60m flight in front of hundreds of...
As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, controversy arose. According to the FAI, the stipulations for the first heavier-than-air flight were as follows: 1. The flight should be done before an official organization, qualified to ratify it 2. The flight should be done in calm weather and over a plain ground, and properly documented 3. The mac...
Regardless, Alberto continued to innovate, and eventually, by No. 19, had created the first practical ultralight aircraft. The Demoiselle series (Santos-Dumont No.19-No.22) were monoplanes with a wire-braced wing mounted above an open-framework bamboo fuselage. An interesting aspect of the No. 19 was its cruciform tail, which, fastened on a univers...
Dec 28, 2021 · Brazilian-born, French-educated Alberto Santos-Dumont achieved the first officially observed powered European flight on October 23, 1906, in France. By flying nearly 200 feet in the “14-bis,” he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize of 3,000 francs for surpassing 25 meters (about 80 feet).
May 29, 2018 · Living in Paris, Santos-Dumont built and flew a series of 14 increasingly sophisticated airships between 1898 and 1905. He turned his attention to heavier-thanair craft in 1906 and, after several abortive hops, he took off and flew for 722 feet (220 m) on November 12.
