ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT.
Alberto Santos-Dumont was born in Brazil in 1877. When but a lad he became intensely interested in aeronautics, having been aroused by witnessing the ascension at a show of an ordinary hot-air balloon. Within the next few years he had made several trips to Paris, and in 1897 made his first ascent in a balloon with the balloon builder Machuron, the partner of the famous Lachambre.
In 1898 he began the construction of his notable series of dirigibles, which eventually reached twelve in number. With his No. 6 he won the $20,000 prize offered by M. Deutsch (de la Meurthe) for the first trip from the Paris Aero Club’s grounds to and around the Eiffel Tower in 30 minutes or less. The distance was nearly 7 miles. It is characteristic of M. Santos-Dumont that he should give $15,000 of the prize to relieve distress among the poor of Paris, and the remainder to his mechanicians who had built the balloon.
His smallest dirigible was the No. 9, which held 7,770 cubic feet of gas; the largest was the No. 10, which held 80,000 cubic feet.
In 1905, when Bleriot, Voisin, and their comrades were striving to accomplish flight with machines heavier than air, Santos-Dumont turned his genius upon the same problem, and on August 14, 1906, he made his first flight with a cellular biplane driven by a 24 horse-power motor. On November 13th of the same year he flew 720 feet with the same machine. These were the first flights of heavier-than-air machines in Europe, and the first public flights anywhere. Later he turned to the monoplane type, and with “La Demoiselle” added new laurels to those already won with his dirigibles.