In 1903, Mr. Ernest Archdeacon stimulated by a conference with Mr. Chanute, at a meeting of the Aëro Club of France, founded a prize of 3,000 francs to be awarded to the first person who should sail or fly 25 meters, with a maximum descent not exceeding one third of the range. As yet no one in either hemisphere had flown in a practical machine, but various aviators were industriously pluming their wings. Captain Ferber had been a follower of Lilienthal since 1898, and a pupil of Mr. Chanute since 1891. Dozens of votaries in France, not to mention other countries, had entered, or were about to enter, the aviation field. Archdeacon himself, Voisin, Blériot, Esnault-Pélterie, Vuia, Delagrange, Tatin, Cornu, Bazin, Levavasseur and many others, were stanch apostles of the heavier than air. Many of these were disciples of Lilienthal, but they were destined all to be distanced by an impetuous Hensonite, who could not realize the necessity for spending months, or years, cautiously coasting downhill to acquire the adroitness requisite to speed a flying chariot over the plain.
In 1906, while many aviators in Europe were developing flyers, and cautiously testing them in various ways, by gliding above sand or water, or swinging from a high wire or traveling arm, Señor Alberto Santos-Dumont, of Brazil, brought forth in France the quaint and crude biplane shown in [Plate XXII]. Aërodynamically this was not a great improvement on the aëroplane of Sir George Cayley constructed 98 years earlier; but it had a petrol motor whose power and lightness would have astounded that talented pioneer in aviation. The motor was an eight-cylinder Antoinette, weighing 170 pounds and developing 50 horse power. The screw, formed of two aluminum blades, was of two meters diameter, one meter pitch, mounted on the engine shaft, and, at 1,500 revolutions a minute, gave a thrust of 330 pounds. The total lifting surface of the aëroplane was 650 square feet, and the weight, including pilot, 645 pounds. This bird-shaped craft ran tail foremost through the air, having the screw at the rear, and the rider in a small basket just before the wings. By means of a pilot-wheel and lever, he could operate the “tail,” i. e., the front rudder, sidewise and vertically, thus steering the craft in two directions. The lateral balance was preserved automatically by means of the dihedral inclination of the wings, aided sometimes by the rider swaying his weight to right or left.
After some days of preliminary adjustment and trial, Santos-Dumont was ready for a dash in his new aëromobile. On August 22d, 1906, he made a brief tentative flight, the first witnessed in Europe since Ader’s surreptitious experiment. On October 23d, he ran this strange machine swiftly over the ground and glided boldly into the air, flying above the excited spectators at a speed of 25 miles an hour, and covering a distance of 200 feet, thus gaining the Archdeacon cup. Again on November 12th, 1906, he made four flights, the last one covering 220 meters in twenty-one seconds, thus gaining the prize of 1,500 francs offered by the Aëro Club of France for the first person who should fly 100 meters. The demonstration was made before the general public and technical witnesses, including an official committee of the Aëro Club of France, who reported that the aëroplane preserved good balance and a true soaring speed independent of the acquired momentum.
Intrinsically the achievements of November 12th were crude and primitive; but in moral effect they were very important. They marked the inception of public aëroplaning before the professional and lay world alike. There was no patent mechanism to conceal, no secret to withhold from rivals, such as had shrouded the work of more circumspect aviators in Europe and America. If Santos-Dumont was not the first to fly, he was the first aëroplane inventor to give his art to the world, and to inaugurate true public flying in presence of technical men, as he had initiated modern motor ballooning. His liberal enthusiasm and that of his colleagues, both aëroplanists and patrons, quickly made France the world’s foremost theater of aviation, at least for the moment. The contagion would of course spread swiftly, and involve the entire civilized world.
Santos-Dumont’s unconventional dash into the air sounded the knell of Lilienthalism. This slow method served to pass time profitably in the nineties, while the gasoline motor was still developing. But with an Antoinette in hand, what live man, particularly what live Frenchman, could tinker long years on the sand hills? Why not mount the craft on little wheels and take a cautious little run; then after some adjustment, make more runs followed by innocuous saltatory flights? This would be so easy, so fascinating, so instructive. How much better than to make two thousand preliminary jumps down the hill slope with the body dangling wildly to keep the balance, then to redesign the entire frame before an engine could be successfully applied! An Antoinette motor, placed on a competently designed Henson aëroplane, would have obviated the whole Lilienthal school. However, they did noble and opportune work, while awaiting the growth of the gasoline engine. This school achieved success by a roundabout method because Henson’s method was not available till the present century, for want of a cheap, light motor. When that appeared Lilienthalism quickly subsided. In other words, Lilienthal’s method was a passing convenience, never a necessity. It could have been employed very profitably in Cayley’s time to develop the art of gliding and soaring; but in the time of Santos-Dumont and his colleagues, flying by Henson’s method would have burst upon the world by reason of its superior value and the allied progress, even if the Lilienthal school had never existed. This is illustrated by the fact that Santos-Dumont succeeded without aid from the sand-hill votaries.
PLATE XXII.
SANTOS-DUMONT’S BIPLANE.
Photo E. Levick, N. Y.