PARIS AS A CENTRE OF AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS
After leaving Monte Carlo, in February 1902, I received many invitations
from abroad to navigate my air-ships. In London, in particular, I was
received with great friendliness by the Aéro Club of Great Britain,
under whose auspices my "No. 6," fished from the bottom of the bay of
Monaco, repaired and once again inflated, was exhibited at the Crystal
Palace.
From St Louis, where the organisers of the Louisiana Purchase Centennial
Exposition had already decided to make air-ship flights a feature of
their World's Fair in 1904, I received an invitation to inspect the
grounds, suggest a course, and confer with them on conditions. As it was
officially announced that a sum of 200,000 dollars had been voted and
set apart for prizes it might be expected that the emulation of air-ship
experimenters would be well aroused.
Arriving at St Louis in the summer of 1902, I at once saw that the
splendid open spaces of the Exposition Grounds offered the best of
racecourses. The prevailing idea at that moment in the minds of some of
the authorities was to set a long course of many hundreds of miles--say,
from St Louis to Chicago. This, I pointed out, would be impracticable,
if only for the reason that the Exposition public would desire to see
the flights from start to finish. I suggested that three great towers or
flagstaffs be erected in the grounds at the corners of an equal-sided
triangle. The comparatively short course around them--between 10 and
20 miles--would afford a decisive test of dirigibility no matter in
what way the wind might blow; while as for speed, the necessary average
might be increased 50 per cent. over that fixed for the Deutsch prize
competition in Paris.
Such was my modest advice. I also thought that, out of the appropriation
of 200,000 dollars (1,000,000 francs), a grand prize for dirigible
aerostation of 100,000 dollars should be offered; only by means of such
an inducement, it seemed to me, could the necessary emulation among
air-ship experimenters be aroused.
While never seeking to make profit from my air-ships, I have always
offered to compete for prizes. While in London, and again in New
York, both before and after my St Louis visit, competitions with prize
sanctions were suggested to me for immediate effort. I accepted all
of them to this point, that I had my air-ships brought to the spot at
considerable cost and effort, and had the prize funds been deposited I
would have done my best to win them. Such deposits failing, I, in each
case, returned to my home in Paris to continue my experiments in my own
way, awaiting the great competition of St Louis.
Prize or no prize, I must work, and I shall always work in this my
chosen field of aerostation. For this my place is Paris, where the
public, in particular the kindly and enthusiastic populace, both knows
and trusts me. Here, in Paris, I go up for my own pleasure day by day,
as my reward for long and costly experiment.
In England and America it is quite different. When I take my air-ships
and my employees to those countries, build my own balloon house, furnish
my own gas plant, and risk breaking machines that cost more than any
automobile, I want it to be done with a settled aim.
I say that I want it to be done with a settled aim, so that, if I fulfil
the aim, I may no longer be criticised, at least on that particular
head. Otherwise I might go to the moon and back and yet accomplish
nothing in the estimation of my critics and--though, perhaps, to a less
extent--in the mind of the public which they sway.
Why have I sought to win prizes? Because the most rational consecration
of such effort and its fulfilment is found in a serious money prize. The
mind of the public makes the obvious connection. When a valuable prize
is handed over it concludes that something has been done to win it.
To win such prizes, then, I waited long in London and New York; but, as
they never passed from words to deeds, after having enjoyed myself very
thoroughly, both socially and as a tourist, I returned to my work and
pleasure in the Paris which I call my home.
And really, after all is said and done, there is no place like Paris for
air-ship experiments. Nowhere else can the experimenter depend on the
municipal and State authorities to be so liberal.
Take the development of automobilism as an example. It is universally
admitted, I imagine, that this great and peculiarly French industry
could not have developed without the speed licence which the French
authorities have wide-mindedly permitted. In spite of the most powerful
social and industrial influences, and in spite of it being England's
turn to offer hospitality to the James Gordon Bennett cup race of 1903,
the English automobilists were not allowed to put their splendid roads
out of the public use for its accommodation for a single day. So the
great event had to come off in Ireland.
In France, and in France only, are not only the authorities, but
the great mass of citizens, so much alive to their advantage in the
development of this national industry that, day by day, year in and year
out, they permit ten thousand automobiles to go tearing through the
highroads at a really dangerous speed. In Paris, in particular, one sees
a "scorching" average in its great Park and its very avenues and streets
that causes Londoners and tourists from New York to stand aghast.
In this same order of ideas I may here state that, in spite of the
tragic air-ship accidents of 1902, I have never once been limited or
in any way impeded in the course of my experiments by the Parisian
authorities; while as for the public, no matter where I land with an
air-ship--in the country roads of the suburbs, in private gardens,
even of great villas, in the avenues and parks and public places of the
capital--I meet with unvarying friendly aid, protection, and enthusiasm.
From that first memorable day when the big boys flying their kites
over Bagatelle seized my guide rope and saved me from an ugly fall as
promptly and intelligently as they had seized the idea of pulling me
against the wind, to the critical moment on that summer day in 1901
when, in my first trial for the Deutsch prize, I descended to repair my
rudder, and good-natured working-men found me a ladder in less time than
it takes me to write the words--and on down to the present moment, when
I take my pleasure in the Bois in my small "No. 9"--I have had nothing
but unvarying friendliness from the intelligent Parisian populace.
I need not say that it is a great thing for an air-ship experimenter
thus to have the confidence and friendly aid of a whole population. Over
certain European frontiers spherical balloons have even been shot at.
And I have often wondered what kind of a reception one of my air-ships
would meet with in the country districts of England itself.
For these reasons, and a hundred others, I consider that my air-ship's
home, like my own, is in Paris. As a boy, in Brazil, my heart turned
to the City of Light, above which in 1783 the first Montgolfier had
been sent up; where the first of the world's aeronauts had made his
first ascension; where the first hydrogen balloon had been set loose;
where first an air-ship had been made to navigate the air with its
steam-engine, screw propeller, and rudder.
As a youth I made my own first balloon ascension from Paris. In Paris I
have found balloon constructors, motor makers, and machinists possessed
not only of skill but of patience. In Paris I made all my first
experiments. In Paris I won the Deutsch prize in the first dirigible
to do a task against a time limit. And, now that I have not only what
I call my racing air-ship but a little "runabout," in which to take my
pleasure over the trees of the Bois, it is in Paris that I am enjoying
my reward in it as--what I was once called reproachfully--an "aerostatic
sportsman!"
[Illustration: "No. 9." SEEN FROM CAPTIVE BALLOON, JUNE 11, 1903]
CONCLUDING FABLE
MORE REASONING OF CHILDREN
During these years Luis and Pedro, the ingenious country boys whom we
found reasoning of mechanical inventions in the Introductory Fable of
this book, have spent some time in Paris. They were present at the
winning of the Deutsch prize of aerial navigation; they spent the winter
of 1901-2 at Monte Carlo; had good places at the review of the 14th July
1903; and have broadened their education by the sedulous reading of
scientific weeklies and the daily newspapers. Now they are preparing to
return to Brazil.
The other day, seated on a café terrace of the Bois de Boulogne, they
chatted of the problem of aerial navigation.
"These tentatives with dirigible balloons, so called, can bring us no
nearer to its solution," said Pedro. "Look you, they are filled with a
substance--hydrogen--fourteen times lighter than the medium in which it
floats--the atmosphere. It would be just as possible to force a tallow
candle through a brick wall!"
"Pedro," said Luis, "do you remember your objections to my waggon
wheels?"
....
"To the locomotive engine?"
....
"To the steamboat?"
"Our only hope to navigate the air," continued Pedro, "must, in the
nature of things, be found in devices heavier than the air--in flying
machines or aeroplanes. Reason by analogy. Look at the bird...."
"Once you desired me to look at the fish," said Luis. "You said the
steamboat ought to wriggle through the water...."
"Do be serious, Luis," said Pedro in conclusive tones. "Exercise
common-sense. Does man fly? No. Does the bird fly? Yes. Then, if man
would fly, let him imitate the bird. Nature has made the bird. Nature
never goes wrong."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.