Upon going to Paris Santos-Dumont at once took up the work of making himself familiar with ballooning in all of its practical aspects. He saw that if he were ever to build an air-ship he must first know all there was to know about balloon-making, methods of filling with gas, lifting capacities, the action of balloons in the air, and all the thousand and one things connected with ordinary ballooning. And Paris has always been the centre of this information. He regards this preliminary knowledge as indispensable to every air-ship builder. He says:
"Before launching out into the construction of air-ships I took pains to make myself familiar with the handling of spherical balloons. I did not hasten, but took plenty of time. In all, I made something like thirty ascensions; at first as a passenger, then as my own captain, and at last alone. Some of these spherical balloons I rented, others I had constructed for me. Of such I have owned at least six or eight. And I do not believe that without such previous study and experience a man is capable of succeeding with an elongated balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship, it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium; to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, now caressing and now brutal, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem, from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. To go up in an ordinary balloon, at least a dozen times, seems to me an indispensable preliminary for acquiring an exact notion of the requisites for the construction and handling of an elongated balloon, furnished with its motor and propeller."
M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen.
M. Santos-Dumont's First Balloon (Spherical).
His first ascent in a balloon was made in 1897, when he was 24 years old, as a passenger with M. Machuron, who had then just returned from the Arctic regions, where he had helped to start Andrée on his ill-fated voyage in search of the North Pole. He found the sensations delightful, being so pleased with the experience that he subsequently secured a small balloon of his own, in which he made several ascents. He also climbed the Alps in order to learn more of the condition of the air at high altitudes.
In 1898 he set about experimentation in the building of a real air-ship or steerable balloon. Efforts had been made in this direction by former inventors, but with small success. As far back as 1852 Henri Gifford made the first of the familiar cigar-shaped balloons, trying steam as a motive power, but he soon found that an engine strong enough to propel the balloon was too heavy for the balloon to lift. That simple failure discouraged experimenters for a long time. In 1877 Dupuy de Lome tried steering a balloon by man power, but the man was not strong enough. In 1883 another Frenchman, Tissandier, experimented with electricity, but, as his batteries had to be light enough to be taken up in the balloon, they proved effective only in helping to weigh it down to earth again. Krebs and Renard, military aëronauts, succeeded better with electricity, for they could make a small circuit with their air-ship, provided only that no air was stirring. Enthusiasts cried out that the problem was solved, but the two aëronauts themselves, as good mathematicians, figured out that they would have to have a motor eight times more powerful than their own, and that without any increase in weight, which was an impossibility at that time.