There was a boy in far-away Brazil who played with his friends the game
of "Pigeon Flies."
In this pastime the boy who is "it" calls out "pigeon flies," or "bat
flies," and the others raise their fingers; but if he should call "fox
flies," and one of his mates should raise his hand, that boy would have
to pay a forfeit.
The Brazilian boy, however, insisted on raising his finger when the
catchwords "man flies" were called, and firmly protested against paying
a forfeit.
Alberto Santos-Dumont, even in those early days, was sure that if man
did not fly then he would some day.
Many an imaginative boy with a mechanical turn of mind has dreamed and
planned wonderful machines that would carry him triumphantly over the
tree-tops, and when the tug of the kite-string has been felt has wished
that it would pull him up in the air and carry him soaring among the
clouds. Santos-Dumont was just such a boy, and he spent much time in
setting miniature balloons afloat, and in launching tiny air-ships
actuated by twisted rubber bands. But he never outgrew this interest in
overhead sailing, and his dreams turned into practical working
inventions that enabled him to do what never a mortal man had done
before--that is, move about at will in the air.
Perhaps it was the clear blue sky of his native land, and the dense,
almost impenetrable thickets below, as Santos-Dumont himself has
suggested, that made him think how fine it would be to float in the air
above the tangle, where neither rough ground nor wide streams could
hinder. At any rate, the thought came into the boy's mind when he was
very small, and it stuck there.
His father owned great plantations and many miles of railroad in Brazil,
and the boy grew up in the atmosphere of ponderous machinery and puffing
locomotives. By the time Santos-Dumont was ten years old he had learned
enough about mechanics to control the engines of his father's railroads
and handle the machinery in the factories. The boy had a natural bent
for mechanics and mathematics, and possessed a cool courage that made
him appear almost phlegmatic. Besides his inherited aptitude for
mechanics, his father, who was an engineer of the Central School of Arts
and Manufactures of Paris, gave him much useful instruction. Like
Marconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, and also, like the inventor
of wireless telegraphy, he had the high intelligence and determination
to win success in spite of many discouragements. Like an explorer in a
strange land, Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in his work, each trial being
different from any other, though the means in themselves were familiar
enough.
[Illustration: SANTOS-DUMONT PREPARING FOR A FLIGHT IN "SANTOS-DUMONT NO. 6"
The steering-wheel can be seen in front of basket, the motor is
suspended in frame to the rear, the propeller and rudder at extreme
end.]
The boy Santos-Dumont dreamed air-ships, planned air-ships, and read
about aerial navigation, until he was possessed with the idea that he
must build an air-ship for himself.
He set his face toward France, the land of aerial navigation and the
country where light motors had been most highly developed for
automobiles. The same year, 1897, when he was twenty-four years old, he,
with M. Machuron, made his first ascent in a spherical balloon, the only
kind in existence at that time. He has described that first ascension
with an enthusiasm that proclaims him a devotee of the science for all
time.
His first ascension was full of incident: a storm was encountered; the
clouds spread themselves between them and the map-like earth, so that
nothing could be seen except the white, billowy masses of vapour shining
in the sun; some difficulty was experienced in getting down, for the air
currents were blowing upward and carried the balloon with them; the
tree-tops finally caught them, but they escaped by throwing out ballast,
and finally landed in an open place, and watched the dying balloon as it
convulsively gasped out its last breath of escaping gas.
After a few trips with an experienced aeronaut, Santos-Dumont determined
to go alone into the regions above the clouds. This was the first of a
series of ascensions in his own balloon. It was made of very light silk,
which he could pack in a valise and carry easily back to Paris from his
landing point. In all kinds of weather this determined sky navigator
went aloft; in wind, rain, and sunshine he studied the atmospheric
conditions, air currents, and the action of his balloon.
The young Brazilian ascended thirty times in spherical balloons before
he attempted any work on an elongated shape. He realised that many
things must be learned before he could handle successfully the much more
delicate and sensitive elongated gas-bag.
In general, Santos-Dumont worked on the theory of the dirigible
balloon--that is, one that might be controlled and made to go in any
direction desired, by means of a motor and propeller carried by a
buoyant gas-bag. His plan was to build a balloon, cigar-shaped, of
sufficient capacity to a little more than lift his machinery and
himself, this extra lifting power to be balanced by ballast, so that the
balloon and the weight it carried would practically equal the weight of
air it displaced. The push of the revolving propeller would be depended
upon to move the whole air-ship up or down or forward, just as the
motion of a fish's fins and tail move it up, down, forward, or back, its
weight being nearly the same as the water it displaces.
The theory seems so simple that it strikes one as strange that the
problem of aerial navigation was not solved long ago. The story of
Santos-Dumont's experiments, however, his adventures and his successes,
will show that the problem was not so simple as it seemed.
Santos-Dumont was built to jockey a Pegasus or guide an air-ship, for he
weighed but a hundred pounds when he made his first ascensions, and
added very little live ballast as he grew older.
Weight, of course, was the great bugbear of every air-ship inventor,
and the chief problem was to provide a motor light enough to furnish
sufficient power for driving a balloon that had sufficient lifting
capacity to support it and the aeronaut in the air. Steam-engines had
been tried, but found too heavy for the power generated; electric motors
had been tested, and proved entirely out of the question for the same
reason.
Santos-Dumont has been very fortunate in this respect, his success,
indeed, being largely due to the compact and powerful gasoline motors
that have been developed for use on automobiles.
Even before the balloon for the first air-ship was ordered the young
Brazilian experimented with his three-and-one-half horse-power gasoline
motor in every possible way, adding to its power, and reducing its
weight until he had cut it down to sixty-six pounds, or a little less
than twenty pounds to a horse-power. Putting the little motor on a
tricycle, he led the procession of powerful automobiles in the
Paris-Amsterdam race for some distance, proving its power and speed. The
motor tested to his satisfaction, Santos-Dumont ordered his balloon of
the famous maker, Lachambre, and while it was building he experimented
still further with his little engine. To the horizontal shaft of his
motor he attached a propeller made of silk stretched tightly over a
light wooden framework. The motor was secured to the aeronaut's basket
behind, and the reservoir of gasoline hung to the basket in front. All
this was done and tested before the balloon was finished--in fact, the
aeronaut hung himself up in his basket from the roof of his workshop and
started his motor to find out how much pushing power it exerted and if
everything worked satisfactorily.
On September 18, 1898, Santos-Dumont made his first ascension in his
first air-ship--in fact, he had never tried to operate an elongated
balloon before, and so much of this first experience was absolutely new.
Imagine a great bag of yellow oiled silk, cigar-shaped, fully inflated
with hydrogen gas, but swaying in the morning breeze, and tugging at its
restraining ropes: a vast bubble eighty-two feet long, and twelve feel
in diameter at its greatest girth. Such was the balloon of
Santos-Dumont's first air-ship. Suspended by cords from the great
gas-bag was the basket, to which was attached the motor and six-foot
propeller, hung sixteen feet below the belly of the great air-fish.
Many friends and curiosity seekers had assembled to see the aeronaut
make his first foolhardy attempt, as they called it. Never before had a
spark-spitting motor been hung under a great reservoir of highly
inflammable hydrogen gas, and most of the group thought the daring
inventor would never see another sunset. Santos-Dumont moved around his
suspended air-ship, testing a cord here and a connection there, for he
well knew that his life might depend on such a small thing as a length
of twine or a slender rod. At one side of a small open space on the
outskirts of Paris the long, yellow balloon tugged at its fastenings,
while the navigator made his final round to see that all was well. A
twist of a strap around the driving-wheel set the motor going, and a
moment later Santos-Dumont was standing in his basket, giving the signal
to release the air-ship. It rose heavily, and travelling with the fresh
wind, the propellers whirling swiftly, it crashed into the trees at the
other side of the enclosure. The aeronaut had, against his better
judgment, gone with the wind rather than against it, so the power of the
propeller was added to the force of the breeze, and the trees were
encountered before the ship could rise sufficiently to clear them. The
damage was repaired, and two days later, September 20, 1898, the
Brazilian started again from the same enclosure, but this time against
the wind. The propeller whirled merrily, the explosions of the little
motor snapped sharply as the great yellow bulk and the tiny basket with
its human freight, the captain of the craft, rose slowly in the air.
Santos-Dumont stood quietly in his basket, his hand on the controlling
cords of the great rudder on the end of the balloon; near at hand was a
bag of loose sand, while small bags of ballast were packed around his
feet. Steadily she rose and began to move against the wind with the slow
grace of a great bird, while the little man in the basket steered right
or left, up or down, as he willed. He turned his rudder for the lateral
movements, and changed his shifting bags of ballast hanging fore and
aft, pulling in the after bag when he wished to point her nose down, and
doing likewise with the forward ballast when he wished to ascend--the
propeller pushing up or down as she was pointed. For the first time a
man had actual control of an air-ship that carried him. He commanded it
as a captain governs his ship, and it obeyed as a vessel answers its
helm.
A quarter of a mile above the heads of the pygmy crowd who watched him
the little South American maneuvered his air-ship, turning circles and
figure eights with and against the breeze, too busy with his rudder,
his vibrating little engine, his shifting bags of ballast, and the great
palpitating bag of yellow silk above him, to think of his triumph,
though he could still hear faintly the shouts of his friends on earth.
For a time all went well and he felt the exhilaration that no
earth-travelling can ever give, as he experienced somewhat of the
freedom that the birds must know when they soar through the air
unfettered. As he descended to a lower, denser atmosphere he felt rather
than saw that something was wrong--that there was a lack of buoyancy to
his craft. The engine kept on with its rapid "phut, phut, phut"
steadily, but the air-ship was sinking much more rapidly than it should.
Looking up, the aeronaut saw that his long gas-bag was beginning to
crease in the middle and was getting flabby, the cords from the ends of
the long balloon were beginning to sag, and threatened to catch in the
propeller. The earth seemed to be leaping up toward him and destruction
stared him in the face. A hand air-pump was provided to fill an air
balloon inside the larger one and so make up for the compression of the
hydrogen gas caused by the denser, lower atmosphere. He started this
pump, but it proved too small, and as the gas was compressed more and
more, and the flabbiness of the balloon increased, the whole thing
became unmanageable. The great ship dropped and dropped through the air,
while the aeronaut, no longer in control of his ship, but controlled by
it, worked at the pump and threw out ballast in a vain endeavour to
escape the inevitable. He was descending directly over the greensward in
the centre of the Longchamps race-course, when he caught sight of some
boys flying kites in the open space. He shouted to them to take hold of
his trailing guide-rope and run with it against the wind. They
understood at once and as instantly obeyed. The wind had the same effect
on the air-ship as it has on a kite when one runs with it, and the speed
of the fall was checked. Man and air-ship landed with a thud that
smashed almost everything but the man. The smart boys that had saved
Santos-Dumont's life helped him pack what was left of "Santos-Dumont No. 1"
into its basket, and a cab took inventor and invention back to Paris.
In spite of the narrow escape and the discouraging ending of his first
flight, Santos-Dumont launched his second air-ship the following May.
Number 2 was slightly larger than the first, and the fault that was
dangerous in it was corrected, its inventor thought, by a ventilator
connecting the inner bag with the outer air, which was designed to
compensate for the contraction of the gas and keep the skin of the
balloon taut. But No. 2 doubled up as had No. 1, while she was still
held captive by a line; falling into a tree hurt the balloon, but the
aeronaut escaped unscratched. Santos-Dumont, in spite of his quiet ways
and almost effeminate speech, his diminutive body, and wealth that
permitted him to enjoy every luxury, persisted in his work with rare
courage and determination. The difficulties were great and the available
information meager to the last degree. The young inventor had to
experiment and find out for himself the obstacles to success and then
invent ways to surmount them. He had need of ample wealth, for the
building of air-ships was expensive business. The balloons were made of
the finest, lightest Japanese silk, carefully prepared and still more
vigorously tested. They were made by the most famous of the world's
balloon-makers, Lachambre, and required the spending of money
unstintedly. The motors cost according to their lightness rather than
their weight, and all the materials, cordage, metal-work, etc., were
expensive for the same reason. The cost of the hydrogen gas was very
great also, at twenty cents per cubic meter (thirty-five cubic feet);
and as at each ascension all the gas was usually lost, the expense of
each sail in the air for gas alone amounted to from $57 for the smallest
ship to $122 for the largest.
[Illustration: SANTOS-DUMONT IN HIS AIR-SHIP "NO. 6" ROUNDING THE EIFFEL
TOWER ON HIS PRIZE-WINNING TRIP]
Nevertheless, in November of 1899 Santos-Dumont launched another
air-ship--No. 3. This one was supported by a balloon of much greater
diameter, though the length remained about the same--sixty-six feet. The
capacity, however, was almost three times as great as No. 1, being
17,655 cubic feet. The balloon was so much larger that the less
expensive but heavier illuminating gas could be used instead of
hydrogen. When the air-ship "Santos-Dumont No. 3" collapsed and dumped
its navigator into the trees, Santos-Dumont's friends took it upon
themselves to stop his dangerous experimenting, but he said nothing, and
straightway set to work to plan a new machine. It was characteristic of
the man that to him the danger, the expense, and the discouragements
counted not at all.
In the afternoon of November 13, 1899, Santos-Dumont started on his
first flight in No. 3. The wind was blowing hard, and for a time the
great bulk of the balloon made little headway against it; 600 feet in
air it hung poised almost motionless, the winglike propeller whirling
rapidly. Then slowly the great balloon began nosing its way into the
wind, and the plucky little man, all alone, beyond the reach of any
human voice, could not tell his joy, although the feeling of triumph was
strong within him. Far below him, looking like two-legged hats, so
foreshortened they were from the aeronaut's point of view, were the
people of Paris, while in front loomed the tall steel spire of the
Eiffel Tower. To sail round that tower even as the birds float about had
been the dream of the young aeronaut since his first ascension. The
motor was running smoothly, the balloon skin was taut, and everything
was working well; pulling the rudder slightly, Santos-Dumont headed
directly for the great steel shaft.
The people who were on the Eiffel Tower that breezy afternoon saw a
sight that never a man saw before. Out of the haze a yellow shape loomed
larger each minute until its outlines could be distinctly seen. It was a
big cigar-shaped balloon, and under it, swung by what seemed gossamer
threads, was a basket in which was a man. The air-ship was going against
the wind, and the man in the basket evidently had full control, for the
amazed people on the tower saw the air-ship turn right and left as her
navigator pulled the rudder-cords, and she rose and fell as her master
regulated his shifting ballast. For twenty minutes Santos-Dumont
maneuvered around the tower as a sailboat tacks around a buoy. While the
people on that tall spire were still watching, the aeronaut turned his
ship around and sailed off for the Longchamps race-course, the green
oval of which could be just distinguished in the distance.
On the exact spot where, a little more than a year before, the same man
almost lost his life and wrecked his first air-ship, No. 3 landed as
softly and neatly as a bird.
Though he made many other successful flights, he discovered so many
improvements that with the first small mishap he abandoned No. 3 and
began on No. 4.
The balloon "Santos-Dumont No. 4" was long and slim, and had an inner
air-bag to compensate for the contraction of the hydrogen gas. This
air-ship had one feature that was entirely new; the aeronaut had
arranged for himself, not a secure basket to stand in, but a frail,
unprotected bicycle seat attached to an ordinary bicycle frame. The
cranks were connected with the starting-gear of the motor.
Seated on his unguarded bicycle seat, and holding on to the
handle-bars, to which were attached the rudder-cords, Santos-Dumont made
voyages in the air with all the assurance of the sailor on the sea.
But No. 4 was soon too imperfect for the exacting Brazilian, and in
April, 1901, he had finished No. 5. This air-cruiser was the longest of
all (105 feet), and was fitted with a sixteen horse-power motor. Instead
of the bicycle frame, he built a triangular keel of pine strips and
strengthened it with tightly strung piano wires, the whole frame, though
sixty feet long, weighing but 110 pounds. Hung between the rods, being
suspended by piano wires as in a spider-web, was the motor, basket, and
propeller-shaft.
The last-named air-ship was built, if not expressly at least with the
intention of trying for the Deutsch Prize of 100,000 francs. This was a
big undertaking, and many people thought it would never be accomplished;
the successful aeronaut had to travel more than three miles in one
direction, round the Eiffel Tower as a racing yacht rounds a stake-boat,
and return to the starting point, all within thirty minutes--_i.e._,
almost seven miles in two directions in half an hour.
The new machine worked well, though at one time the aerial navigator's
friends thought that they would have to pick him up in pieces and carry
him home in a basket. This incident occurred during one of the first
flights in No. 5. Everything was going smoothly, and the air-ship
circled like a hawk, when the spectators, who were craning their necks
to see, noticed that something was wrong; the motor slowed down, the
propeller spun less swiftly, and the whole fabric began to sink toward
the ground. While the people gazed, their hearts in their mouths, they
saw Santos-Dumont scramble out of his basket and crawl out on the
framework, while the balloon swayed in the air. He calmly knotted the
cord that had parted and crept back to his place, as unconcernedly as if
he were on solid ground.
It was in August of 1901 that he made his first official trial for the
Deutsch Prize. The start was perfect, and the machine swooped toward the
distant tower straight as a crow flies and almost as fast. The first
half of the distance was covered in nine minutes, so twenty-one minutes
remained for the balance of the journey: success seemed assured; the
prize was almost within the grasp of the aeronaut. Of a sudden assured
success was changed to dire peril; the automatic valves began to leak,
the balloon to sag, the cords supporting the wooden keel hung low, and
before Santos-Dumont could stop the motor the propeller had cut them and
the whole system was threatened. The wind was drifting the air-ship
toward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator had lost control; 500 feet below
were the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide which was the
least dangerous; there was but a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, death
staring him in the face, chose the roofs. A swift jerk of a cord, and a
big slit was made in the balloon. Instantly man, motor, gas-bag, and
keel went tumbling down straight into the court of the hotels. The great
balloon burst with a noise like an explosion, and the man was lost in a
confusion of yellow-silk covering, cords, and wires. When the firemen
reached the place and put down their long ladders they found him
standing calmly in his wicker basket, entirely unhurt. The long, staunch
keel, resting by its ends on the walls of the court, prevented him from
being dashed to pieces. And so ended No. 5.
Most men would have given up aerial navigation after such an experience,
but Santos-Dumont could not be deterred from continuing his experiments.
The night of the very day which witnessed his fearful fall and the
destruction of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for "Santos-Dumont No. 6."
It showed the pluck and determination of the man as nothing else could.
Twenty-two days after the aeronaut's narrow escape his new air-ship was
finished and ready for a flight. No. 6 was practically the same as its
predecessor--the triangular keel was retained, but an eighteen
horse-power gasoline motor was substituted for the sixteen horse-power
used previously. The propeller, made of silk stretched over a bamboo
frame, was hung at the after end of the keel; the motor was a little aft
of the centre, while the basket to which led the steering-gear, the
emergency valve to the balloon, and the motor-controlling gear was
suspended farther forward. To control the upward or downward pointing of
the new air-ship, shifting ballast was used which ran along a wire under
the keel from one end to the other; the cords controlling this ran to
the basket also.
The new air-ship worked well, and the experimental flights were
successful with one exception--when the balloon came in contact with a
tree.
It was in October, 1901 (the 19th), when the Deutsch Prize Committee was
asked to meet again and see a man try to drive a balloon against the
wind, round the Eiffel Tower, and return.
The start took place at 2:42 P.M. of October 19, 1901, with a beam wind
blowing. Straight as a bullet the air-ship sped for the steel shaft of
the tower, rising as she flew. On and on she sped, while the spectators,
remembering the finish of the last trial, watched almost breathlessly.
With the air of a cup-racer turning the stake-boat she rounded the steel
spire, a run of three and three-fifth miles, in nine minutes (at the
rate of more than twenty-two miles an hour), and started on the
home-stretch.
For a few moments all went well, then those who watched were horrified
to see the propeller slow down and nearly stop, while the wind carried
the air-ship toward the Tower. Just in time the motor was speeded up and
the course was resumed. As the group of men watched the speck grow
larger and larger until things began to take definite shape, the white
blur of the whirling propeller could be seen and the small figure in the
basket could be at last distinguished. Again the motor failed, the speed
slackened, and the ship began to sink. Santos-Dumont threw out enough
ballast to recover his equilibrium and adjusted the motor. With but
three minutes left and some distance to go, the great dirigible balloon
got up speed and rushed for the goal. At eleven and a half minutes past
three, twenty-nine minutes and thirty-one seconds after starting,
Santos-Dumont crossed the line, the winner of the Deutsch Prize. And so
the young Brazilian accomplished that which had been declared
impossible.
[Illustration: THE MOTOR AND BASKET OF "SANTOS-DUMONT NO. 9"
The gasoline holder, from which a tube leads to the motor, can be seen
on the side of the basket.]
The following winter the aerial navigator, in the same No. 5, sailed
many times over the waters of the Mediterranean from Monte Carlo. These
flights over the water, against, athwart, and with the wind, some of
them faster than the attending steamboats could travel, continued until
through careless inflation of the balloon the air-ship and navigator
sank into the sea. Santos-Dumont was rescued without being harmed in the
least, and the air-ship was preserved intact, to be exhibited later to
American sightseers.
"Santos-Dumont No. 6," the most successful of the series built by the
determined Brazilian, looks as if it were altogether too frail to
intrust with the carrying of a human being. The 105-foot-long balloon, a
light yellow in colour, sways and undulates with every passing breeze.
The steel piano wires by which the keel and apparatus are hung to the
balloon skin are like spider-webs in lightness and delicacy, and the
motor that has the strength of eighteen horses is hardly bigger than a
barrel. A little forward of the motor is suspended to the keel the
cigar-shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the top rod are the
batteries which furnish the current to make the sparks for the purpose
of exploding the gas in the motor.
Santos-Dumont himself says that the world is still a long way from
practical, everyday aerial navigation, but he points out the apparent
fact that the dirigible balloon in the hands of determined men will
practically put a stop to war. Henri Rochefort has said: "The day when
it is established that a man can direct an air-ship in a given direction
and cause it to maneuver as he wills--there will remain little for the
nations to do but to lay down their arms."
The man who has done so much toward the abolishing of war can rest well
content with his work.