Santos-Dumont

   The extremely rich grandson of a French immigrant and son of a Brazilian coffee-plantation owner, Alberto Santos-Dumont set himself up in France in 1891. There he became fascinated with automobiles and motors, and later with flying machines. He hired teachers to help him learn what he thought he needed, and thus met Emmanuel Aime, a math teacher, a founder of the French Aero Club, and its first general secretary; Aime helped Santos-Dumont till 1906 with his most difficult calculations. Later Aime went on to work with Salmson on another heavier-than-air machine.
   Santos-Dumont's first flying machine was a little round balloon named Brazil: at the time, in 1898, it was the smallest man-carrying balloon in the world. His last dirigible was his No 14, built and flown in 1905; it was famous as the lifter of his first heavier-than-air design, No 14bis, which made its first hop the following year. But he had been making model aeroplanes and model gliders for some time. A photograph shows him and his mechanic Chapin at Neuilly in the winter of 1905, holding a large model. It features a semicircular wing with a long flexible boom at the tip of which is fixed a triangular tailplane. A string is stretched from the nose: apparently it is being tested as a kite. The design was developed into a glider with a wing area of 22 sqm which was apparently built and tested behind a motorboat. A 1906 drawing shows the same design but larger, with a push-pull propeller combination in which the rear one turned on the boom itself. To have been known as No 11, this one was not built.

   No 14bis: His dirigible No 14, built and flown in 1905. was a long drooping cigar with a small car suspended far below. Planning to use it the following year to carry a heavier-than-air machine, he rebuilt it with more volume, and worked at the same time to design and build the aeroplane, to be known after the dirigible as No 14bis. It was an awkward canard biplane pusher with a 3-bay wing cell and 6 side-curtains. The pilot stood up in his cockpit, the narrow car from an earlier balloon, and controlled the aircraft through hand-wheels. At the front of the long covered fuselage hung a biplane cell, pivoted to work as both elevator and rudder. The whole machine rested precariously on 2 wheels. A 24 hp Antoinette was mounted between the wings, driving the large Tatin propeller taken from the dirigible No 14.
   It was tested under the belly of No 14 on 22 July 1906 at Bagatelle; soon afterwards he slung it from 2 pulleys on a cable at Neuilly St James, as Ferber had done for his own aircraft at Meudon. The Tatin was replaced by an aluminum paddle-bladed propeller built by Levavasseur, and further tests were run to check the working of the controls, the aeroplane being towed back to the starting point each time by a donkey named Quino. Santos-Dumont had a 20-meter ramp built for eventual take-off trials, but did not use it. On the first test the propeller was broken, and the 24 hp Antoinette was replaced on 21 August with a 50 hp version.
   On 4 September he tried again on the parade ground at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, and damaged the forward elevator, which had been reworked to control pitch only; 2 polygonal flaps had been installed between the outer wing-curtains to act as air-brakes and to control yaw. These were operated with wires attached to the pilot's back. On 7 September it taxied for 17 seconds, pitching up but not flying; on 12 September the propeller was changed for a larger one. On 13 September it hopped for a distance of at least 7 m, and France went wild; but it was damaged in the effort. On 23 October it flew 60 m at a height of some 3 m; on the 26th it flew even further, and Santos-Dumont was awarded the Archdeacon cup for the 25-meter prize.
   Further efforts damaged the machine; then on 12 November at Bagatelle, at near-zero temperatures, Santos-Dumont made 3 unsuccessful tries; the fourth was against the wind, and he flew 82 m; a fifth managed 220 m, slightly higher than 7 m, and turning to port. The machine was damaged upon landing. No 14bis flew only once more, on 4 April 1907, at St Cyr, when it covered another 50 m.
   Though a modest achievement, even for the time, this performance can be considered a decisive impulse towards heavier-than-air flight in France and Europe.
   Santos-Dumont's further efforts to fly his No 14bis resulted only in the destruction of the entire fuselage. Today, models have been wind-tunnel-tested; a full-scale reproduction was recently tested at Le Bourget. The results were very clear indeed: the aeroplane should not have flown!

   (Span: 11.5 m wing area: 52 sqm; weight: 300 kg; 24 hp (50 hp) Antoinette)