MY AIRSHIPS

ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT

MY AIRSHIPS

The Story of My Life

BY

ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1904

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURG

[CONTENTS]

[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]

[MY AIRSHIPS]

[INTRODUCTORY FABLE]
THE REASONING OF CHILDREN

Two young Brazilian boys strolled in the shade, conversing. They were simple youths of the interior, knowing only the plenty of the primitive plantation where, undisturbed by labour-saving devices, Nature yielded man her fruits at the price of the sweat of his brow.

They were ignorant of machines to the extent that they had never seen a waggon or a wheelbarrow. Horses and oxen bore the burdens of plantation life on their backs, and placid Indian labourers wielded the spade and the hoe.

Yet they were thoughtful boys. At this moment they discussed things beyond all that they had seen or heard.

"Why not devise a better means of transport than the backs of horses and of oxen?" Luis argued. "Last summer I hitched horses to a barn door, loaded it with sacks of maize, and hauled in one load what ten horses could not have brought on their backs. True, it required seven horses to drag it, while five men had to sit around its edges and hold the load from falling off."

"What would you have?" answered Pedro. "Nature demands compensations. You cannot get something from nothing or more from less!"

"If we could put rollers under the drag, less pulling power would be needed."

"Bah! the force saved would be used up in the labour of shifting the rollers."

"The rollers might be attached to the drag at fixed points by means of holes running through their centres," mused Luis. "Or why should not circular blocks of wood be fixed at the four corners of the drag?... Look, Pedro, yonder along the road. What is coming? The very thing I imagined, only better! One horse is pulling it at a good trot!"

The first waggon to appear in that region of the interior stopped, and its driver spoke with the boys.

"These round things?" he answered to their questions; "they are called wheels."

Pedro accepted his explanation of the principle slowly.

"There must be some hidden defect in the device," he insisted. "Look around us. Nowhere does Nature employ the device you call the wheel. Observe the mechanism of the human body; observe the horse's frame; observe...."

"Observe that horse and man and waggon with its wheels are speeding from us," replied Luis, laughing. "Cannot you yield to accomplished facts? You tire me with your appeals to Nature. Has man ever accomplished anything worth having except by combating Nature? We do violence to her when we chop down a tree! I would go further than this invention of the waggon. Conceive a more powerful motive force than that horse...."

"Attach two horses to the waggon."

"I mean a machine," said Luis.

"A mechanical horse with powerful iron legs!" suggested Pedro.

"No; I would have a motor waggon. If I could find an artificial force I would cause it to act on a point in the circumference of each wheel. Then the waggon could carry its own puller!"

"You might as well attempt to lift yourself from the ground by pulling at your boot straps!" laughed Pedro. "Listen, Luis. Man is subject to certain natural laws. The horse, it is true, carries more than his own weight, but by a device of Natures own—his legs. Had you the artificial force you dream of you would have to apply it naturally. I have it! It would have to be applied to poles to push your waggon from behind!"

"I hold to applying the force to the wheels," insisted Luis.

"By the nature of things you would lose power," said Pedro. "A wheel is harder to force on from a point inside its circumference than when the motive power is applied to that circumference directly, as by pushing or pulling the waggon."

"To relieve friction I would run my power waggon on smooth iron rails, then the loss in power would be gained in speed."

"Smooth iron rails!" laughed Pedro. "Why, the wheels would slip on them. You would have to put notches all round their circumference and corresponding notches in the rails. And what would there be to prevent the power waggon slipping off the rails even then?"

The boys had been walking briskly. Now a shrieking noise startled them. Before them stretched in long lines a railway in course of construction, and from among the hills came toward them, at what seemed immense speed, a construction train.

"It is an avalanche!" cried Pedro.

"It is the very thing that I was dreaming of!" said Luis.

The train stopped. A gang of labourers emerged from it and began working on the road-bed, while the locomotive engineer answered the boys' questions and explained the mechanism of his engine. The boys discussed this later wonder as they wended their way homeward.

"Could it be adapted to the river men might become lords of the water as of the land," said Luis. "It would be only necessary to devise wheels capable of taking hold of the water. Fix them to a great frame like that waggon body and the steam-engine could propel it along the surface of the river!"

"Now you talk folly," exclaimed Pedro. "Does a fish float on the surface? In the water we must travel as the fish does—in it, not over it! Your waggon body, being filled with light air, would upset at your first movement. And your wheels—do you imagine they would take hold of so liquid a thing as water?"

"What would you suggest?"

"I would suggest that your water waggon be jointed in half-a-dozen places, so that it could be made to squirm through the water like a fish. Listen! A fish navigates the water. You desire to navigate the water. Then study the fish! There are fish that use propeller fins and flippers too. So you might devise broad boards to strike the water, as our hands and feet strike it in swimming. But do not talk about waggon wheels in the water!"

They were now beside the broad river. The first steamer to navigate it was seen approaching from the distance. The boys could not yet well distinguish it.

"It is evidently a whale," said Pedro. "What navigates the water? Fish. What is the fish that sometimes is seen swimming with its body half way above the surface? The whale. See, it is spouting water!"

"That is not water, but steam or smoke," said Luis.

"Then it is a dead whale, and the steam is the vapour of putrefaction. That is why it stays so high in the water—a dead whale rises high on its back!"

"No," said Luis; "it is really a steam water waggon."

"With smoke coming from fire in it, as from the locomotive?"

"Yes."

"But the fire would burn it up...."

"The body is doubtless iron, like the locomotive."

"Iron would sink. Throw your hatchet in the river and see."

The steam-boat came to shore, close to the boys. Running to it, to their joy, they perceived on its deck an old friend of their family, a neighbouring planter.

"Come, boys!" he said, "and I will show you round this steam-boat."

After a long inspection of the machinery the two boys sat with their old friend on the foredeck in the shade of an awning.

"Pedro," said Luis, "will not men some day invent a ship to sail in the sky?"

The common-sense old planter glanced with apprehension at the youth's face, flushed with ardour.

"Have you been much in the sun, Luis?" he asked.

"Oh, he is always talking in that flighty way," Pedro reassured him. "He takes pleasure in it."

"No, my boy," said the planter; "man will never navigate a ship in the sky."

"But on St John's Eve, when we all make bonfires, we also send up little tissue-paper spheres with hot air in them," insisted Luis. "If we could construct a very great one, big enough to lift a man, a light car, and a motor, might not the whole system be propelled through the air, as a steam-boat is propelled through the water?"

"Boys, never talk foolishness!" exclaimed the old friend of the family hurriedly as the captain of the boat approached. It was too late. The captain had heard the boy's observation; instead of calling it folly he excused him.

"The great balloon which you imagine has existed since 1783," he said; "but, though capable of carrying a man or several men, it cannot be controlled—it is at the mercy of the slightest breeze. As long ago as 1852 a French engineer named Giffard made a brilliant failure with what he called a 'dirigible balloon,' furnished with the motor and propeller Luis has dreamed of. All he did was to demonstrate the impossibility of directing a balloon through the air."

"The only way would be to build a flying machine on the model of the bird," spoke up Pedro with authority.

"Pedro is a very sensible boy," observed the old planter. "It is a pity Luis is not more like him and less visionary. Tell me, Pedro, how did you come to decide in favour of the bird as against the balloon?"

"Easily," replied Pedro glibly. "It is the most ordinary-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, and Nature never goes wrong. Had the bird been furnished with a great air bag I might have suggested a balloon."

"Exactly!" exclaimed both captain and planter.

But Luis, sitting in his corner, muttered, unconvinced as Galileo: "It will move!"

[CHAPTER I]
THE COFFEE PLANTATION

From the way in which the partisans of Nature have fallen on me I might well be the uninformed and visionary Luis of the fable, for has it not been taken for granted that I began my experiments ignorant alike of mechanics and ballooning? And before my experiments succeeded, were they not all called impossible?

Does not the final condemnation of the common-sense Pedro continue to weigh on me?

After steering my ship through the sky at will I am still told that flying creatures are heavier than the air. A little more and I should be made responsible for the tragic accidents of others who had not my experience of mechanics and aeronautics.

On the whole, therefore, I think it is best to begin at the coffee plantation where I was born in the year 1873.

PLANTATION RAILWAY
SANTOS-DUMONT COFFEE PLANTATION IN BRAZIL

Inhabitants of Europe comically figure those Brazilian plantations to themselves as primitive stations of the boundless pampas, as innocent of the cart and the wheelbarrow as of the electric light and the telephone. There are such stations far in the interior. I have been through them on hunting trips, but they are not the coffee plantations of Sao-Paulo.

I can hardly imagine a more stimulating environment for a boy dreaming over mechanical inventions. At the age of seven I was permitted to drive our "locomobiles" of the epoch—steam traction-engines of the fields with great broad wheels. At the age of twelve I had conquered my place in the cabs of the Baldwin locomotive engines hauling train-loads of green coffee over the sixty miles of our plantation railway. When my father and brothers would take pleasure in making horseback trips far and near, to see if the trees were clean, if the crops were coming up, if the rains had done damage, I preferred to slip down to the Works and play with the coffee-engines.

I think it is not generally understood how scientifically a Brazilian coffee plantation may be operated. From the moment when a railway train has brought the green berries to the Works to the moment when the finished and assorted product is loaded on the transatlantic ships, no human hand touches the coffee.

You know that the berries of black coffee are red when they are green. Though it may complicate the statement, they look like cherries. Car loads of them are unloaded at the central works and thrown into great tanks, where the water is continually renewed and agitated. Mud that has clung to the berries from the rains, and little stones which have got mixed up with them in the loading of the cars, go to the bottom, while the berries and the little sticks and bits of leaves float on the surface and are carried from the tank by means of an inclined trough, whose bottom is pierced with innumerable little holes. Through these holes falls some of the water with the berries, while the little sticks and pieces of leaves float on.

The Works

"Locomobile"
THE SANTOS-DUMONT COFFEE PLANTATION IN BRAZIL

The fallen coffee berries are now clean. They are still red, about the size and look of cherries. The red exterior is a hard pod or polpa. Inside of each pod are two beans, each of which is covered with a skin of its own. The water which has fallen with the berries carries them on to the machine called the despolpador, which breaks the outside pod and frees the beans. Long tubes, called "dryers," now receive the beans, still wet, and with their skins still on them. In these dryers the beans are continually agitated in hot air.

Coffee is very delicate. It must be handled delicately. Therefore the dried beans are lifted by the cups of an endless-chain elevator to a height, whence they slide down an inclined trough to another building because of the danger of fire. This is the coffee machine house.

The first machine is a ventilator, in which sieves, shaken back and forth, are so combined that only the coffee beans can pass through them. No coffee is lost in them and no dirt is kept by them, for one little stone or stick that may still have been carried with the beans would be enough to break the next machine.

Another endless-chain elevator carries the beans to a height, whence they fall through an inclined trough into this descascador or "skinner." It is a highly delicate machine; if the spaces between are a trifle too big the coffee passes without being skinned, while if they are too small they break the beans.

Another elevator carries the skinned beans with their skins to another ventilator, in which the skins are blown away.

Still another elevator takes the now clean beans up and throws them into the "separator," a great copper tube two yards in diameter and about seven yards long, resting at a slight incline. Through the separator tube the coffee slides. As it is pierced at first with little holes the smaller beans fall through them. Farther along it is pierced with larger holes, and through these the medium-sized beans fall, and still farther along are still larger holes, for the large round beans called "Moka."

The machine is a separator because it separates the beans into their conventional grades by size. Each grade falls into its hopper, beneath which are stationed weighing scales and men with coffee sacks. As the sacks fill up to the required weight they are replaced by empty ones, and the tied and labelled sacks are shipped to Europe.

As a boy I played with this machinery and the driving engines that furnished its motive force, and before long familiarity had taught me how to repair any part of it. As I have said, it is delicate machinery. In particular, the moving sieves would be continually getting out of order. While they were not heavy, they moved back and forth horizontally at great speed and took an enormous amount of motive power. The belts were always being changed, and I remember the fruitless efforts of all of us to remedy the mechanical defects of the device.

Now is it not curious that those troublesome shifting sieves were the only machines at the coffee works that were not rotary? They were not rotary, and they were bad. I think this put me as a boy against all agitating devices in mechanics and in favour of the more easily-handled and more serviceable rotary movement.

It may be that half-a-century from now man will assume mastery of the air by means of flying machines heavier than the medium in which they move. I look forward to the time with hope, and at the present moment I have gone further to meet it than any other, because my own air-ships (which have been so reproached on this head) are slightly heavier than the air. But I am prejudiced enough to think that when the time comes the conquering device will not be flapping wings or any substitute of an agitating nature.

I cannot say at what age I made my first kites, but I remember how my comrades used to tease me at our game of "Pigeon flies!" All the children gather round a table, and the leader calls out: "Pigeon flies!" "Hen flies!" "Crow flies!" "Bee flies!" and so on, and at each call we were supposed to raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out "Dog flies!" "Fox flies!" or some other like impossibility, to catch us. If anyone raised a finger he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called "Man flies!" for at the word I would always lift my finger very high, as a sign of absolute conviction, and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit.

Among the thousands of letters which I received after winning the Deutsch prize there was one that gave me particular pleasure. I quote from it as a matter of curiosity:

"... Do you remember the time, my dear Alberto, when we played together 'Pigeon flies!'? It came back to me suddenly the day when the news of your success reached Rio.

"'Man flies!' old fellow! You were right to raise your finger, and you have just proved it by flying round the Eiffel Tower.

"You were right not to pay the forfeit; it is M. Deutsch who has paid it in your stead. Bravo! you well deserve the 100,000 franc prize.

"They play the old game now more than ever at home, but the name has been changed and the rules modified—since October 19, 1901. They call it now 'Man flies!' and he who does not raise his finger at the word pays his forfeit.—

Your friend,

Pedro."

This letter brings back to me the happiest days of my life, when I exercised myself in making light aeroplanes with bits of straw, moved by screw propellers driven by springs of twisted rubber, or ephemeral silk-paper balloons. Each year, on June 24th, over the St John bonfires, which are customary in Brazil from long tradition, I inflated whole fleets of these little Montgolfiers, and watched in ecstasy their ascension to the skies.

In those days, I confess, my favourite author was Jules Verne. The wholesome imagination of this truly great writer, working magically with the immutable laws of matter, fascinated me from childhood. In its daring conceptions I saw, never doubting, the mechanics and the science of the coming ages, when man should by his unaided genius rise to the height of a demigod.

With Captain Nemo and his shipwrecked guests I explored the depths of the sea in that first of all submarines, the Nautilus. With Phineas Fogg I went round the world in eighty days. In "Screw Island" and "The Steam House" my boyish faith leaped out to welcome the ultimate triumphs of an automobilism that in those days had not as yet a name. With Hector Servadoc I navigated the air.

I saw my first balloon in 1888, when I was about fifteen years old. There was a fair or celebration of some sort at the town of Sao-Paulo, and a professional made the ascent, letting himself down afterwards in a parachute. By this time I was perfectly familiar with the history of Montgolfier and the balloon craze, which, following on his courageous and brilliant experiments, so significantly marked the last years of the eighteenth, and the first years of the nineteenth, centuries. In my heart I had an admiring worship for the four men of genius—Montgolfier, and the physicist, Charles, and Pilâtre de Rozier, and the engineer, Henry Giffard—who have attached their names for ever to great steps forward in aerial navigation.

I, too, desired to go ballooning. In the long, sun-bathed Brazilian afternoons, when the hum of insects, punctuated by the far-off cry of some bird, lulled me, I would lie in the shade of the verandah and gaze into the fair sky of Brazil, where the birds fly so high and soar with such ease on their great outstretched wings, where the clouds mount so gaily in the pure light of day, and you have only to raise your eyes to fall in love with space and freedom. So, musing on the exploration of the vast aerial ocean, I, too, devised air-ships and flying machines in my imagination.

These imaginations I kept to myself. In those days, in Brazil, to talk of inventing a flying machine or dirigible balloon would have been to mark oneself off as unbalanced and visionary. Spherical balloonists were looked on as daring professionals, not differing greatly from acrobats; and for the son of a planter to dream of emulating them would have been almost a social sin.

[CHAPTER II]
PARIS—PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS—AUTOMOBILES

In 1891 it was decided that our family should make a trip to Paris, and I rejoiced doubly at the prospect. All good Americans are said to go to Paris when they die. But to me, with the bias of my reading, France—the land of my father's ancestors and of his own education as an engineer at the École Centrale—represented everything that is powerful and progressive.

In France the first hydrogen balloon had been let loose and the first air-ship had been made to navigate the air with its steam-engine, screw propeller, and rudder. Naturally I figured to myself that the problem had made marked progress since Henry Giffard in 1852, with a courage equal to his science, gave his masterly demonstration of the problem of directing balloons.

I said to myself: "I am going to Paris to see the new things—steerable balloons and automobiles!"

HENRIQUES SANTOS-DUMONT
FATHER OF A. SANTOS-DUMONT AND FOUNDER OF THE COFFEE PLANTATIONS IN BRAZIL

On one of my first free afternoons, therefore, I slipped away from the family on a tour of exploration. To my immense astonishment I learned that there were no steerable balloons—that there were only spherical balloons, like that of Charles in 1783! In fact, no one had continued the trials of an elongated balloon driven by a thermic motor begun by Henry Giffard. The trials of such balloons with an electric motor, undertaken by the Tissandier brothers in 1883, had been repeated by two constructors in the following year, but had been finally given up in 1885. For years no "cigar-shaped" balloon had been seen in the air.

This threw me back on spherical ballooning. Consulting the Paris city directory I had noted the address of a professional aeronaut. To him I explained my desires.

"You want to make an ascent?" he asked gravely. "Hum! hum! Are you sure you have the courage? A balloon ascent is no small thing, and you seem too young."

I assured him both of my purpose and my courage. Little by little he yielded to my arguments. Finally he consented to take me "for a short ascent." It must be on a calm, sunny afternoon, and not last more than two hours.

"My honorarium will be 1200 francs," he added, "and you must sign me a contract to hold yourself responsible for all damages we may do to your own life and limbs and to mine, to the property of third parties, and to the balloon and its accessories. Furthermore, you agree to pay out railway fares and transportation for the balloon and its basket back to Paris from the point at which we come to the ground."

I asked time for reflection. To a youth eighteen years of age 1200 francs was a large sum. How could I justify the spending of it to my parents? Then I reflected:

"If I risk 1200 francs for an afternoon's pleasure I shall find it either good or bad. If it is bad the money will be lost. If it is good I shall want to repeat it and I shall not have the means."

This decided me. Regretfully I gave up ballooning and took refuge in automobiling.

Automobiles were still rare in Paris in 1891, and I had to go to the works at Valentigny to buy my first machine, a Peugeot three-and-a-half horse-power roadster.

It was a curiosity. In those days there were no automobile licenses, no "chauffeurs'" examinations. We drove our new inventions through the streets of the capital at our own risks and perils. Such was the curiosity they aroused that I was not allowed to stop in public places like the Place de l'Opéra for fear of attracting multitudes and obstructing traffic.

Immediately I became an enthusiastic automobilist. I took pleasure in understanding the parts and their proper interworking; I learned to care for my machine and to repair it; and when, at the end of some seven months, our whole family returned to Brazil I took the Peugeot roadster with me.

Returning to Paris in 1892, with the balloon idea still obsessing me, I looked up a number of other professional aeronauts. Like the first, all wanted extravagant sums to take me up with them on the most trivial kind of ascent. All took the same attitude. They made a danger and a difficulty of ballooning, enlarging on its risks to life and property. Even in presence of the great prices they proposed to charge me they did not encourage me to close with them. Obviously they were determined to keep ballooning to themselves as a professional mystery. Therefore I bought a new automobile.

I should add that this condition of things has changed wonderfully since the foundation of the Paris Aéro Club.

Automobile tricycles were just then coming to the fore. I chose one, and rejoiced in its freedom from breakdowns. In my new enthusiasm for the type, I was the first to introduce motor-tricycle races in Paris. Renting the bicycle track of the Parc des Princes for an afternoon I organised the race and offered the prizes. "Common-sense" people declared that the event would end disastrously; they proved to their own satisfaction that the tricycles, going round the short curves of a bicycle track, would overturn and wreck themselves. If they did not do this the inclination would certainly cause the carburator to stop or not to work so well, and the stoppage of the carburator round the sharp curve would upset the tricycles. The directors of the Vélodrome, while accepting my money, refused to let me have the track for a Sunday afternoon, fearing a fiasco! They were disappointed when the race proved to be a great success.

Returning again to Brazil I regretted bitterly that I had not persevered in my attempt to make a balloon ascent. At that distance, far from ballooning possibilities, even the high prices demanded by the aeronauts seemed to me of secondary importance. Finally, one day in 1897, in a Rio book-shop, when making my purchases of reading matter for a new voyage to Paris, I came on a volume of MM. Lachambre and Machuron, "Andrée—Au Pôle Nord en Ballon."

The reading of this book during the long sea voyage proved a revelation to me, and I finished by studying it like a text-book. Its description of materials and prices opened my eyes. At last I saw clearly. Andrée's immense balloon—a reproduction of whose photograph on the book cover showed how those who gave it the final varnishing climbed up its sides and over its summit like a mountain—cost only 40,000 francs to fully construct and equip!

I determined that on arriving in Paris I would cease consulting professional aeronauts and would make the acquaintance of constructors.

I was particularly anxious to meet M. Lachambre, the builder of the Andrée balloon, and M. Machuron, who was his associate and the writer of the book. In these men I will say frankly that I found all I had hoped for. When I asked M. Lachambre how much it would cost me to take a short trip in one of his balloons his reply so astonished me that I asked him to repeat it.

"For a long trip of three or four hours," he said, "it will cost you 250 francs, all expenses and return of balloon by rail included."

"And the damages?" I asked.

"We shall not do any damage!" he replied, laughing.

I closed with him on the spot, and M. Machuron agreed to take me up the next day.

[CHAPTER III]
MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT

I have kept the clearest remembrance of the delightful sensations I experienced in this my first trial in the air. I arrived early at the Parc d'Aerostation of Vaugirard so as to lose nothing of the preparations.

The balloon, of a capacity of 750 cubic metres, was lying a flat mass on the grass. At a signal from M. Lachambre the workmen turned on the gas, and soon the formless thing rounded up into a great sphere and rose into the air.

At 11 A.M. all was ready. The basket rocked prettily beneath the balloon, which a mild, fresh breeze was caressing. Impatient to be off, I stood in my corner of the narrow wicker basket with a bag of ballast in my hand. In the other corner M. Machuron gave the word: "Let go all!"

Suddenly the wind ceased. The air seemed motionless around us. We were off, going at the speed of the air current in which we now lived and moved. Indeed, for us, there was no more wind; and this is the first great fact of all spherical ballooning. Infinitely gentle is this unfelt movement forward and upward. The illusion is complete: it seems not to be the balloon that moves but the earth that sinks down and away.

At the bottom of the abyss, which already opened 1500 yards below us, the earth, instead of appearing round like a ball, shows concave like a bowl by a peculiar phenomenon of refraction whose effect is to lift up constantly to the aeronaut's eyes the circle of the horizon.

Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs, are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air. The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways, and the rows of houses look like children's playthings.

While my gaze was still held fascinated on the scene a cloud passed before the sun. Its shadow cooled the gas in the balloon, which wrinkled and began descending, gently at first, and then with accelerated speed, against which we strove by throwing out ballast. This is the second great fact of spherical ballooning—we are masters of our altitude by the possession of a few pounds of sand!

Regaining our equilibrium above a plateau of clouds at about 3000 yards we enjoyed a wonderful sight. The sun cast the shadow of the balloon on this screen of dazzling whiteness, while our own profiles, magnified to giant size, appeared in the centre of a triple rainbow! As we could no longer see the earth all sensation of movement ceased. We might be going at storm speed and not know it. We could not even know the direction we were taking save by descending below the clouds to regain our bearings.

A joyous peal of bells mounted up to us. It was the noonday Angelus ringing from some village belfry. I had brought up with us a substantial lunch of hard-boiled eggs, cold roast beef and chicken, cheese, ice-cream, fruits and cakes, champagne, coffee, and Chartreuse. Nothing is more delicious than lunching like this above the clouds in a spherical balloon. No dining-room can be so marvellous in its decoration. The sun sets the clouds in ebullition, making them throw up rainbow jets of frozen vapour like great sheaves of fireworks all around the table. Lovely white spangles of the most delicate ice formation scatter here and there by magic; while flakes of snow form, moment by moment, out of nothingness, beneath our very eyes, and in our very drinking-glasses.

I was finishing my little glass of liqueur when the curtain suddenly fell on this wonderful stage setting of sunlight, cloud billows, and azure. The barometer rose rapidly 5 millimetres, showing a sudden rupture of equilibrium and a swift descent. Probably the balloon had become loaded down with several pounds of snow, and it was falling into a cloud.

We passed into the half darkness of the fog. We could still see our basket, our instruments, and the parts of the rigging nearest us, but the netting that held us to the balloon was visible only to a certain height, and the balloon itself had completely disappeared. So we had for a moment the strange and delightful sensation of hanging in the void without support, of having lost our last ounce of weight in a limbo of nothingness, sombre and portentous.

After a few minutes of fall, slackened by throwing out more ballast, we found ourselves under the clouds at a distance of about 300 yards from the ground. A village fled away from us below. We took our bearings with the compass, and compared our route map with the immense natural map that unfolded below. Soon we could identify roads, railways, villages, and forests, all hastening toward us from the horizon with the swiftness of the wind itself.

The storm which had sent us downward marked a change of weather. Now little gusts began to push the balloon from right to left, up and down. From time to time the guide rope—a great rope dangling 100 yards below our basket—would touch earth, and soon the basket, too, began to graze the tops of trees.

What is called "guide-roping" thus began for me under conditions peculiarly instructive. We had a sack of ballast at hand, and when some special obstacle rose in our path, like a tree or a house, we threw out a few handfuls of sand to leap up and pass over it. More than 50 yards of the guide rope dragged behind us on the ground; and this was more than enough to keep our equilibrium under the altitude of 100 yards, above which we decided not to rise for the rest of the trip.

This first ascent allowed me to appreciate fully the utility of this simple part of the spherical balloon's rigging, without which its landing would usually present grave difficulties. When, for one reason or another—humidity gathering on the surface of the balloon, a downward stroke of wind, accidental loss of gas, or, more frequently, the passing of a cloud before the face of the sun—the balloon came back to earth with disquieting speed, the guide rope would come to rest in part on the ground, and so, unballasting the whole system by so much of its weight, stopped, or at least eased, the fall. Under contrary conditions any too rapid upward tendency of the balloon was counterbalanced by the lifting of the guide rope off the ground, so that a little more of its weight became added to the weight of the floating system of the moment before.

Like all human devices, however, the guide rope, along with its advantages, has its inconveniences. Its rubbing along the uneven surfaces of the ground—over fields and meadows, hills and valleys, roads and houses, hedges and telegraph wires—gives violent shocks to the balloon. Or it may happen that the guide rope, rapidly unravelling the snarl in which it has twisted itself, catches hold of some asperity of the surface or winds itself around the trunk or branches of a tree. Such an incident was alone lacking to complete my instruction.

As we passed a little group of trees a shock stronger than any hitherto felt threw us backward in the basket. The balloon had stopped short, and was swaying in the wind gusts at the end of its guide rope, which had curled itself around the head of an oak. For a quarter of an hour it kept us shaking like a salad-basket, and it was only by throwing out a quantity of ballast that we finally got ourselves loose. The lightened balloon made a tremendous leap upward and pierced the clouds like a cannon-ball. Indeed, it threatened to reach dangerous heights, considering the little ballast we had remaining in store for use in descending. It was time to have recourse to effective means, to open the manœuvre valve and let out a portion of our gas.

It was the work of a moment. The balloon began descending to earth again, and soon the guide rope again rested on the ground. There was nothing to do but to bring the trip to an end, because only a few handfuls of sand remained to us.

He who wishes to navigate an air-ship should first practise a good many landings in a spherical balloon—that is, if he wishes to land without breaking balloon, keel, motor, rudder, propeller, water-ballast cylinders, and fuel holders. The wind being rather strong, it was necessary to seek shelter for this last manœuvre. At the end of the plain a corner of the forest of Fontainebleau was hurrying toward us. In a few moments we had turned the extremity of the wood, sacrificing our last handful of ballast. The trees now protected us from the violence of the wind, and we cast anchor, at the same time opening wide the emergency valve for the wholesale escape of the gas.

The twofold manœuvre landed us without the least dragging. We set foot on solid ground, and stood there watching the balloon die. Stretched out in the field, it was losing the remains of its gas in convulsive agitations, like a great bird that dies in beating its wings.

After taking a dozen instantaneous photographs of the dying balloon we folded it and packed it in the basket with its netting folded alongside. The little chosen corner in which we had landed formed part of the grounds of the Chateau de la Ferrière, belonging to M. Alphonse de Rothschild. Labourers from a neighbouring field were sent for a conveyance to the village of La Ferrière itself, and half-an-hour later a brake came. Putting everything into it we set off to the railway station, which was some 4 kilometres (2½" miles) distant. There we had some work to lift the basket with its contents to the ground, as it weighed 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds). At 6.30 we were back at Paris, after a journey of 100 kilometres (more than 60 miles), and nearly two hours passed in the air.

[CHAPTER IV]
MY "BRAZIL"—SMALLEST OF SPHERICAL BALLOONS

I liked ballooning so much that, coming back from my first trip with M. Machuron, I told him that I wanted a balloon built for myself. He liked the idea. He thought that I wanted an ordinary-sized spherical balloon, between 500 and 2000 cubic metres in volume. No one would think of making one smaller.

It is only a short time ago, but it is curious how constructors still clung to heavy materials. The smallest balloon basket had to weigh 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.). Nothing was light—neither envelope, rigging, nor accessories.

I gave M. Machuron my ideas. He cried out against it when I told him I wanted a balloon of the lightest and toughest Japanese silk, 100 cubic metres (about 3500 cubic feet) in volume. At the works both he and M. Lachambre tried to prove to me that the thing was impossible.

"THE BRAZIL"
SMALLEST OF SPHERICAL BALLOONS

How often have things been proved to me impossible! Now I am used to it I expect it. But in those days it troubled me. Still I persevered.

They showed me that for a balloon to have "stability" it must have a certain weight. Again, a balloon of 100 cubic metres, they said, would be affected by the movements of the aeronaut in his basket much more than a large balloon of regulation size.

Fig. 1.Fig. 2.

With a large balloon the centre of gravity in the weight of the aeronaut is as in Fig. 1, a. When the aeronaut moves, say, to the right in his basket, Fig. 1, b, the centre of gravity of the whole system is not shifted appreciably.

In a very small balloon the centre of gravity, Fig. 2, a, is undisturbed only so long as the aeronaut sits straight in the centre of his basket. When he moves to the right the centre of gravity, Fig. 2, b, is shifted beyond the vertical line of the balloon's circumference, causing the balloon to swing in the same direction.

Therefore, they said, your necessary movements in the basket will cause your little balloon to roll and swing continually.

"We shall make the suspension tackle longer in proportion," I replied. It was done, and the "Brazil" proved remarkably stable.

When I brought my light Japanese silk to M. Lachambre he looked at it and said: "It will be too weak." But when we came to try it with the dynamometer it surprised us. Tested thus, Chinese silk stands over 1000 kilogrammes (or 2200 lbs.) strain to the linear metre (3·3 feet). The thin Japanese silk stood a strain of 700 kilogrammes (1540 lbs.)—that is, it proved to be thirty times stronger than necessary according to the theory of strains. This is astonishing when you consider that it weighs only 30 grammes (a little more than one ounce) per square metre. To show how experts may be mistaken in their merely off-hand judgments I have been building my air-ship balloons of this same material; yet the inside pressure they have to stand is enormous, while all spherical balloons have a great hole in the bottom to relieve it.

As the proportions finally adopted for the "Brazil" were 113 cubic metres (4104 cubic feet), corresponding to about 113 square metres (135 square yards) of silk surface, the whole envelope weighed scarcely 3½" kilogrammes (less than 8 lbs.). But the weight of the varnish, three coats, brought it up to 14 kilogrammes (about 31 lbs.). The net, which often weighs into the hundreds of lbs., weighed 1800 grammes, or nearly 4 lbs. The basket, which usually weighs 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.) at a minimum, weighed 6 kilogrammes (13 lbs.); the basket which I now have with my little "No. 9" weighs less than 5 kilogrammes (11 lbs.). My guide rope, small, but very long—100 yards—weighed at most 8 kilogrammes (17½" lbs.); its length gave the "Brazil" a good spring. Instead of an anchor I put in a little grappling-iron of 3 kilogrammes (6½" lbs.).

Making everything light in this way I found that, in spite of the smallness of the balloon, it would have ascensional force to take up my own weight of 50 kilogrammes (110 lbs.) and 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.) of ballast. As a fact, I took up that amount on my first trip. On another occasion, when a French Cabinet Minister was present, anxious to see the smallest spherical balloon ever made, I had practically no ballast at all, only 4 or 5 kilogrammes (10 or 11 lbs.). Nevertheless, causing the balloon to be weighed, I went up, and made a good ascent.

The "Brazil" was very handy in the air—easy to control. It was easy to pack also on descending, and the story that I carried it in a valise is true.

Before starting out in my little "Brazil" I made from twenty-five to thirty ascents in ordinary spherical balloons, quite alone, as my own captain and sole passenger. M. Lachambre had many public ascents, and allowed me to do some of them for him. Thus I made ascents in many parts of France and Belgium. As I got the pleasure and the experience, and as I saved him the labour and paid all my own expenses and damages, it was a mutually advantageous arrangement.

I do not believe that, without such previous study and experience with a spherical balloon, a man can be capable of succeeding with an elongated dirigible 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, 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 have been oneself the captain of an ordinary balloon at the very least a dozen times seems to me an indispensable preliminary to acquiring an exact notion of the requisites for constructing and handling an elongated balloon furnished with its motor and propeller.

Naturally, I am filled with amazement when I see inventors, who have never set a foot in the basket, drawing up on paper—and even executing in whole or in part—fantastic air-ships, whose balloons are to have a capacity of thousands of cubic metres, loaded down with enormous motors which they do not succeed in raising from the ground, and furnished with machinery so complicated that nothing works! Such inventors are afraid of nothing, because they have no idea of the difficulties of the problem. Had they previously journeyed through the air at the wind's will, and amid all the disturbing influences of atmospheric phenomena, they would understand that a dirigible balloon, to be practical, requires first of all to have the utmost extreme of simplicity in all its mechanism.

Some of the unhappy constructors who have paid with their lives the forfeit of their rashness had never made a single responsible ascent as captain of a spherical balloon! And the majority of their emulators, now so devotedly labouring, are in the same inexperienced condition. This is my explanation of their lack of success. They are in the condition in which the first-comer would find himself were he to agree to build and steer a transatlantic liner without having ever quitted land or set foot in a boat!

[CHAPTER V]
THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY DANGERS OF BALLOONING

One of the most astonishing adventures I had during this period of spherical ballooning took place directly over Paris.

I had started from Vaugirard with four invited guests in a large balloon constructed for me after I had tired of making solitary trips in the little "Brazil."

From the start there seemed to be very little wind. I rose slowly, seeking an air current. At 1000 metres (3/5 of a mile high) I found nothing. At 1500 metres (one mile) we still remained almost stationary. Throwing out more ballast we rose to 2000 metres (1¼ mile), when a vagrant breeze started to take us over the centre of Paris.

When we had arrived at a point over the Louvre ... it left us! We descended ... and found nothing!

Then happened the ludicrous thing. In a blue sky without a cloud, bathed in sunlight, and with the faint yelps of all the dogs of Paris mounting to our ears, we lay becalmed! Up we went again, hunting an air current. Down we went again, hunting an air current. Up and down, up and down! Hour after hour passed, and we remained always hanging, always over Paris!

At first we laughed. Then we grew tired. Then almost alarmed. At one time I had even the idea of landing in Paris itself, near the Gare de Lyon, where I perceived an open space. Yet the attempt would have been dangerous, because my four companions could not be depended on for coolness in an emergency. They had not the ballooning habit.

Worst of all, we were now losing gas. Drifting slowly eastward hour after hour one by one the sacks of ballast had been emptied. By the time that we had reached the Vincennes wood we had begun to throw out miscellaneous objects—ballast-sacks, the luncheon-baskets, two light camp-stools, two kodaks, and a case of photographic plates!

All during this latter period we were quite low—not over 300 yards above the tree-tops. Now, as we sank lower, we had a real fright. Would not the guide rope at least curl itself around some tree and hold us there for hours? So we struggled to maintain our altitude above the tree-tops, until all at once a queer little wind gust took us over the Vincennes racecourse.

"Now is our time!" I exclaimed to my companions. "Hold fast!"

With this I pulled on the valve rope, and we came down with celerity but scarcely any shock.

Personally, I have felt not only fear but also pain and real despair in a spherical balloon. It has not been often, because no sport is more regularly safe and mild and pleasurable. Such real dangers as it has are confined usually to the landing, and the balloonist of experience knows how to meet them; while from its imaginary dangers in the air one is regularly very safe. Therefore the particular adventure, full of pain and fear, that I recall to mind was all the more remarkable in that it occurred in high altitude.

It happened at Nice in 1900, when I went up from the Place Masséna in a good-sized spherical balloon, alone, and intending to drift a few hours only amid the enchanting scenery of the mountains and the sea.

The weather was fine, but the barometer soon fell, indicating storm. For a time the wind took me in the direction of Cimiez, but as I rose it threatened to carry me out to sea. I threw out ballast, abandoned the current, and mounted to the height of about a mile.

Shortly after this I let the balloon go down again, hoping to find a safe air current, but when within 300 yards of the ground, near the Var, I noticed that I had ceased descending. As I had determined to land soon in any case I pulled on the valve rope and let out more gas. And here the terrible experience began.

I could not go down. I glanced at the barometer, and found, indeed, that I was going up. Yet I ought to be descending, and I felt—by the wind and everything—that I must be descending. Had I not let out gas?

To my great uneasiness I discovered only too soon what was wrong. In spite of my continuous apparent descent I was, nevertheless, being lifted by an enormous column of air rushing upward. While I fell in it I rose rapidly higher with it.

I opened the valve again; it was useless. The barometer showed that I had reached a still greater altitude, and I could now take account of the fact by the way in which the land was disappearing under me. I now closed the valve to save my gas. There was nothing but to wait and see what would happen.

The upward-rushing column of air continued to take me to a height of 3000 metres (almost 2 miles). I could do nothing but watch the barometer. Then, after what seemed a long time, it showed that I had begun descending.

When I began to see land I threw out ballast, not to strike the earth too quickly. Now I could perceive the storm beating the trees and shrubbery. Up in the storm itself I had felt nothing.

Now, too, as I continued falling lower, I could see how swiftly I was being carried laterally. By the time I perceived the coming danger I was in it. Carried along at a terrific rate, knocking against the tops of trees, and continually threatened with a painful death, I threw out my anchor. It caught in trees and shrubs and broke away. Had it been heavy timber all would have been over with me. As it chanced, I was dragged through the small trees and yielding shrubbery, my face a mass of cuts and bruises, my clothes torn from my back, in pain and strain, fearing the worst, and able to do nothing to save myself. Just as I had given myself up for lost the guide rope wound itself around a tree and held. I was precipitated from the basket, and fell unconscious. When I came to I had to walk some distance until I met some peasants. They helped me back to Nice, where I went to bed, and had the doctors sew me up.

During the early period when I was glad to make public ascents for my balloon constructor I had undergone a somewhat similar experience, and that by night. The ascent took place at Péronne, in the north of France, one stormy afternoon, quite late. Indeed, I started in spite of thunder threatening in the distance, a gloomy semi-twilight all around me, and the remonstrances of the public, among whom it was known that I was not an aeronaut by trade. They feared my inexperience, and wished me either to renounce the ascent or else to oblige me to take up the balloon constructor with me, he being the responsible organiser of the fête.

I would listen to nothing, and started off as I had planned. Soon I had cause to regret my rashness. I was alone, lost in the clouds, amid flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, in the rapidly-approaching darkness of the night!

On, on I went tearing in the blackness. I knew that I must be going with great speed, yet felt no motion. I heard and felt the storm. I formed a part of the storm. I felt myself in great danger, yet the danger was not tangible. With it there was a fierce kind of joy. What shall I say? How shall I describe it? Up there in the black solitude, amid the lightning flashes and the thunderclaps, I was a part of the storm.

When I landed the next morning—long after I had sought a higher altitude and let the storm pass on beneath me—I found that I was well into Belgium. The dawn was peaceful, so that my landing took place without difficulty. I mention this adventure because it was made account of in the papers of the time, and to show that night ballooning, even in a storm, may be more dangerous in appearance than reality. Indeed, night ballooning has a charm that is all its own.

One is alone in the black void—true, in a murky limbo, where one seems to float without weight, without a surrounding world—a soul freed from the weight of matter. Yet now and again there are the lights of earth to cheer one. We see a point of light far on ahead. Slowly it expands. Then where there was one blaze there are countless bright spots. They run in lines, with here and there a brighter cluster. We know that it is a city.

Then, again, it is out into the lone land, with only a faint glow here and there. When the moon rises we see, perhaps, a faint curling line of grey. It is a river, with the moonlight falling on its waters.

There is a flash upward and a faint roar. It is a railway train, the locomotive's fires, maybe, illuminating for a moment its smoke as it rises.

Then for safety we throw out more ballast, and rise through the black solitudes of the clouds into a soul-lifting burst of splendid starlight. There, alone with the constellations, we await the dawn.

And when the dawn comes, red and gold and purple in its glory, one is almost loth to seek the earth again, although the novelty of landing in who knows what part of Europe affords still another unique pleasure.

For many the great charm of all ballooning lies here. The balloonist becomes an explorer. Say that you are a young man who would roam, who would enjoy adventures, who would penetrate the unknown and deal with the unexpected—but say that you are tied down at home by family and business. I advise you to take to spherical ballooning. At noon you lunch peaceably amid your family. At 2 P.M. you mount. Ten minutes later you are no longer a commonplace citizen—you are an explorer, an adventurer of the unknown as truly as they who freeze on Greenland's icy mountains or melt on India's coral strand.

You know but vaguely where you are and cannot know where you are going. Yet much may depend upon your choice as well as your skill and experience. The choice of altitude is yours—whether to accept this current or mount higher and go with another. You may mount above the clouds, where one breathes oxygen from tubes, while the earth, in the last glimpse you had of it, seems to spin beneath you, and you lose all bearings; or you may descend and scud along the surface, aided by your guide rope and a dipperful of ballast to leap over trees and houses—giant leaps made without effort.

Then when the time comes to land there is the true explorer's zest of coming on unknown peoples like a god from a machine. "What country is this?" Will the answer come in German, Russian, or Norwegian? Paris Aéro Club members have been shot at when crossing European frontiers. Others, landing, have been taken prisoners to the burgomeister or the military governor, to languish as spies while the telegraph clicked to the far-off capital, and then to end the evening over champagne at an officers' enthusiastic mess. Still others have had to strive with the dangerous ignorance and superstition even of some remote little peasant population. These are the chances of the winds.

MOTOR OF "No. 1"

[CHAPTER VI]
I YIELD TO THE STEERABLE BALLOON IDEA

During my ascent with M. Machuron, while our guide rope was wrapped around the tree and the wind was shaking us so outrageously, he improved the occasion to discourage me against all steerable ballooning.

"Observe the treachery and vindictiveness of the wind," he cried between shocks. "We are tied to the tree, yet see with what force it tries to jerk us loose." (Here I was thrown again to the bottom of the basket.) "What screw propeller could hold a course against it? What elongated balloon would not double up and take you flying to destruction?"

It was discouraging. Returning to Paris by rail I gave up the ambition to continue Giffard's trials, and this state of mind lasted with me for weeks. I would have argued fluently against the dirigibility of balloons. Then came a new period of temptation, for a long-cherished idea dies hard. When I took account of its practical difficulties I found my mind working automatically to convince itself that they were not. I caught myself saying: "If I make a cylindrical balloon long enough and thin enough it will cut the air ..." and, with respect to the wind, "shall I not be as a sailing yachtsman who is not criticised for refusing to go out in a squall?"

At last an accident decided me. I have always been charmed by simplicity, while complications, be they never so ingenious, repel me. Automobile tricycle motors happened to be very much perfected at the moment. I delighted in their simplicity, and, illogically enough, their merits had the effect of deciding my mind against all other objections to steerable ballooning.

"I will use this light and powerful motor," I said. "Giffard had no such opportunity."

Giffard's primitive steam-engine, weak in proportion to its weight, spitting red-hot sparks from its coal fuel, had afforded that courageous innovator no fair chance, I argued. I did not dally a single moment with the idea of an electric motor, which promises little danger, it is true, but which has the capital ballooning defect of being the heaviest known engine, counting the weight of its battery. Indeed, I have so little patience with the idea that I shall say no more about it except to repeat what Mr Edison said to me on this head in April 1902: "You have done well," he said, "to choose the petroleum motor. It is the only one of which an aeronaut can dream in the present state of the industry; and steerable balloons with electric motors, especially as they were fifteen or twenty years ago, could have led to no result. That is why the Tissandier brothers gave them up."

In spite of the recent immense improvements made in the steam-engine it would not have been able to decide me in favour of steerable ballooning. Motor for motor it is, perhaps, better than the petroleum motor, but when you compare the boiler with the carburator the latter weighs grammes per horse-power while the boiler weighs kilogrammes. In certain light steam-motors, that are lighter even than petroleum motors, the boiler always ruins the proportion. With one pound of petroleum you can exert one horse-power during one hour. To get this same energy from the most improved steam-engine you will want many kilogrammes of water and of fuel, be it petroleum or other. Even condensing the water, you cannot have less than several kilogrammes per horse-power.

Then if one uses coal fuel with the steam-motor there are the burning sparks; while if one uses petroleum with burners you have a great amount of fire. We must do the petroleum motor the justice to admit that it makes neither flame nor burning sparks.

At the present moment I have a Clement petroleum motor that weighs but 2 kilogrammes (4½" lbs.) per horse-power. This is my 60 horse-power "No. 7," whose total weight is but 120 kilogrammes (264 lbs.). Compare this with the new steel-and-nickel battery of Mr Edison, which promises to weigh 18 kilogrammes (40 lbs.) per horse-power.

The light weight and the simplicity of the little tricycle motor of 1897 are, therefore, responsible for all my trials. I started from this principle: To make any kind of success it would be necessary to economise weight, and so comply with the pecuniary, as well as the mechanical, conditions of the problem.

Nowadays I build air-ships in a large way. I am in it as a kind of lifework. Then I was but a half-decided beginner, unwilling to spend large sums of money in a doubtful project.

Therefore I resolved to build an elongated balloon just large enough to raise, along with my own 50 kilogrammes (110 lbs.) of weight, as much more as might be necessary for the basket and rigging, motor, fuel, and absolutely indispensable ballast. In reality I was building an air-ship to fit my little tricycle motor.

I looked for the workshop of some small mechanic near my residence in the centre of residential Paris where I could have my plans executed under my own eyes and could apply my own hands to the task. I found such an one in the Rue du Colisée. There I first worked out a tandem of two cylinders of a tricycle motor—that is, their prolongation, one after the other, to work the same connecting-rod while fed by a single carburator.

To bring everything down to a minimum weight, I cut out from every part of the motor whatever was not strictly necessary to solidity. In this way I realised something that was interesting in those days—a 3½" horse-power motor that weighed 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.).

I soon had an opportunity to test my tandem motor. The great series of automobile road-races, which seems to have had its climax in Paris-Madrid in 1903, was raising the power of these wonderful engines by leaps and bounds year after year. Paris-Bordeaux in 1895 was won with a 4 horse-power machine at an average speed of 25 kilometres (15½" miles) per hour. In 1896 Paris-Marseilles-and-return was accomplished at the rate of 30 kilometres (18½" miles) per hour. Now, in 1897, it was Paris-Amsterdam. Although not entered for the race it occurred to me to try my tandem motor attached to its original tricycle. I started, and to my contentment found that I could keep well up with the pace. Indeed, I might have won a good place in the finish—my vehicle was the most powerful of the lot in proportion to its weight, and the average speed of the winner was only 40 kilometres (25 miles) per hour—had I not begun to fear that the jarring of my motor in so strenuous an effort might in the long run derange it, and I imagined I had more important work for it to do.

For that matter, my automobiling experience has stood me in good stead with my air-ships. The petroleum motor is still a delicate and capricious thing, and there are sounds in its spitting rumble that are intelligible only to the long-experienced ear. Should the time come in some future flight of mine when the motor of my air-ship threatens danger I am convinced that my ear will hear, and I shall heed, the warning. This almost instinctive faculty I owe only to experience. Having broken up the tricycle for the sake of its motor I purchased at about this time an up-to-date 6 horse-power Panhard, with which I went from Paris to Nice in 54 hours—night and day, without stop—and had I not taken up dirigible ballooning I must have become a road-racing automobile enthusiast, continually exchanging one type for another, continually in search of greater speed, keeping pace with the progress of the industry, as so many others do, to the glory of French mechanics and the new Parisian sporting spirit.

But my air-ships stopped me. While experimenting I was tied down to Paris. I could take no long trips, and the petroleum automobile, with its wonderful facility for finding fuel in every hamlet, lost its greatest use in my eyes. In 1898 I happened to see what was to me an unknown make of light American electric buggy. It appealed alike to my eye, my needs, and my reason, and I bought it. I have never had cause to regret the purchase. It serves me for running about Paris, and it goes lightly, noiselessly, and without odour.

I had already handed the plan of my balloon envelope to the constructors. It was that of a cylindrical balloon terminating fore and aft in cones, 25 metres (82½" feet) long, with a diameter of 3·5 metres (11½" feet) and a gas capacity of 180 cubic metres (6354 cubic feet). My calculations had left me only 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.) for both the balloon material and its varnish. Therefore I gave up the usual network and chemise, or outer cover; indeed, I considered this second envelope, holding the balloon proper within it, to be not only superfluous but harmful, if not dangerous. Instead I attached the suspension cords of my basket directly to the balloon envelope by means of small wooden rods introduced into long horizontal hems sewed on both sides to its stuff for a great part of the balloon's length. Again, in order not to pass my 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.), including varnish, I was obliged to have recourse to my Japanese silk, which had proved so staunch in the "Brazil."

After glancing at this order for the balloon envelope M. Lachambre at first refused it plumply. He would not make himself a party to such rashness. But when I recalled to his memory how he had said the same thing with respect to the "Brazil," and went on to assure him that, if necessary, I would cut and sew the balloon with my own hands, he gave way to me and undertook the job. He would cut and sew and varnish the balloon according to my plans.

The balloon envelope being thus put under way I prepared my basket, motor, propeller, rudder, and machinery. When they were completed I made many trials with them, suspending the whole system by a cord from the rafters of the workshop, starting the motor, and measuring the force of the forward swing caused by the propeller working on the atmosphere behind it. Holding back this forward movement by means of a horizontal rope attached to a dynamometer, I found that the traction power developed by the motor in my propeller with two arms, each measuring one metre across, was as high as 11·4 kilogrammes (25 lbs.). This was a figure that promised good speed to a cylindrical balloon of my dimensions, whose length was equal to nearly seven times its diameter. With 1200 turns to the minute the propeller, which was attached directly to the motor shaft, might easily, if all went well, give the air-ship a speed of not less than 8 metres (26½" feet) per second.

Fig. 3.

The rudder I made of silk, stretched over a triangular steel frame. There now remained nothing to devise but a system of shifting weights, which from the very first I saw would be indispensable. For this purpose I placed two bags of ballast, one fore and one aft, suspended from the balloon envelope by cords. By means of lighter cords each of these two weights could be drawn into the basket (see Fig. 3), thus shifting the centre of gravity of the whole system. Pulling in the fore weight would cause the stem of the balloon to point diagonally upward; pulling in the aft weight would have just the opposite effect. Besides these I had a guide rope some 60 metres (200 feet) long, which could also be used, at need, as shifting ballast.

All this occupied several months, and the work was all carried on in the little machine-shop of the Rue du Colisée, only a few steps from the place where later the Paris Aéro Club was to have its first offices.

[CHAPTER VII]
MY FIRST AIR-SHIP CRUISES (1898)

In the middle of September 1898 I was ready to begin in the open air. The rumour had spread among the aeronauts of Paris, who formed the nucleus of the Aéro Club, that I was going to carry up a petroleum motor in my basket. They were sincerely disquieted by what they called my temerity, and some of them made friendly efforts to show me the permanent danger of such a motor under a balloon filled with a highly inflammable gas. They begged me instead to use the electric motor—"which is infinitely less dangerous."

I had arranged to inflate the balloon at the Jardin d'Acclimatation, where a captive balloon was already installed and furnished with everything needful daily. This gave me facilities for obtaining, at one franc per cubic metre, the 180 cubic metres (6354 cubic feet) of hydrogen which I needed.

THE "SANTOS-DUMONT No. 1"
FIRST START

On September 18th my first air-ship—the "Santos-Dumont No. 1," as it has since been called to distinguish it from those which followed—lay stretched out on the turf amid the trees of the beautiful Jardin d'Acclimatation, the new Zoological Garden of the west of Paris. To understand what happened I must explain the starting of spherical balloons from such places where groups of trees and other obstructions surround the open space.

When the weighing and balancing of the balloon are finished and the aeronauts have taken their place in the basket the balloon is ready to quit the ground with a certain ascensional force. Thereupon aids carry it toward an extremity of the open space in the direction from which the wind happens to be blowing, and it is there that the order: "Let go all!" is given. In this way the balloon has the entire open space to cross before reaching the trees or other obstructions which may be opposite and toward which the wind would naturally carry it. So it has space and time to rise high enough to pass over them. Moreover, the ascensional force of the balloon is regulated accordingly: it is very little if the wind be light; it is more if the wind be stronger.

I had thought that my air-ship would be able to go against the wind that was then blowing, therefore I had intended to place it for the start at precisely the other end of the open space from that which I have described—that is, down stream, and not up stream in the air current with relation to the open space surrounded by trees. I would thus move out of the open space without difficulty, having the wind against me—for under such conditions the relative speed of the air-ship ought to be the difference between its absolute speed and the velocity of the wind—and so by going against the air current I should have plenty of time to rise and pass over the trees. Evidently it would be a mistake to place the air-ship at a point suitable for an ordinary balloon without motor and propeller.

And yet it was there that I did place it, not by my own will, but by the will of the professional aeronauts who came in the crowd to be present at my experiment. In vain I explained that by placing myself "up stream" in the wind with relation to the centre of the open space I should inevitably risk precipitating the air-ship against the trees before I would have time to rise above them, the speed of my propeller being superior to that of the wind then blowing.

All was useless. The aeronauts had never seen a dirigible balloon start off. They could not admit of its starting under other conditions than those of a spherical balloon, in spite of the essential difference between the two. As I was alone against them all I had the weakness to yield.

I started off from the spot they indicated, and within a second's time I tore my air-ship against the trees, as I had feared I should do. After this deny if you can the existence of a fulcrum in the air.

This accident at least served to show the effectiveness of my motor and propeller in the air to those who doubted it before.

I did not waste time in regrets. Two days later, on September 20th, I actually started from the same open space, this time choosing my own starting-point.

I passed over the tops of the trees without mishap, and at once began sailing around them, to give on the spot a first demonstration of the air-ship to the great crowd of Parisians that had assembled. I had their sympathy and applause then, as I have ever had it since; the Parisian public has always been a kind and enthusiastic witness of my efforts.

Under the combined action of the propeller impulse, of the steering rudder, of the displacement of the guide rope, and of the two sacks of ballast sliding backward and forward as I willed, I had the satisfaction of making my evolutions in every direction—to right and left, and up and down.

Such a result encouraged me, and, being inexperienced, I made the great mistake of mounting high in the air to 400 metres (1300 feet), an altitude that is considered nothing for a spherical balloon, but which is absurd and uselessly dangerous for an air-ship under trial.

At this height I commanded a view of all the monuments of Paris. I continued my evolutions in the direction of the Longchamps racecourse, which from that day I chose for the scene of my aerial experiments.

So long as I continued to ascend the hydrogen increased in volume as a consequence of the atmospheric depression. So by its tension the balloon was kept taut, and everything went well. It was not the same when I began descending. The air pump, which was intended to compensate the contraction of the hydrogen, was of insufficient capacity. The balloon, a long cylinder, all at once began to fold in the middle like a pocket knife, the tension of the cords became unequal, and the balloon envelope was on the point of being torn by them. At that moment I thought that all was over, the more so as the descent, which had begun, could no longer be checked by any of the usual means on board, where nothing worked.

The descent became a fall. Luckily, I was falling in the neighbourhood of the grassy turf of Bagatelle, where some big boys were flying kites. A sudden idea struck me. I cried to them to grasp the end of my guide rope, which had already touched the ground, and to run as fast as they could with it against the wind.

They were bright young fellows, and they grasped the idea and the rope at the same lucky instant. The effect of this help in extremis was immediate, and such as I had hoped. By the manœuvre we lessened the velocity of the fall, and so avoided what would have otherwise have been a bad shaking-up, to say the least.

I was saved for the first time. Thanking the brave boys, who continued aiding me to pack everything into the air-ship's basket, I finally secured a cab and took the relics back to Paris.

[CHAPTER VIII]
HOW IT FEELS TO NAVIGATE THE AIR

Notwithstanding the breakdown I felt nothing but elation that night. The sentiment of success filled me: I had navigated the air.

I had performed every evolution prescribed by the problem. The breakdown itself had not been due to any cause foreseen by the professional aeronauts.

I had mounted without sacrificing ballast. I had descended without sacrificing gas. My shifting weights had proved successful, and it would have been impossible not to recognise the capital triumph of these oblique flights through the air. No one had ever made them before.

Of course, when starting, or shortly after leaving the ground, one has sometimes to throw out ballast to balance the machine, as one may have made a mistake and started with the air-ship far too heavy. What I have referred to are manœuvres in the air.

"No. 4" FREE DIAGONAL MOVEMENT UP

"No. 6." FREE DIAGONAL MOVEMENT DOWN

My first impression of aerial navigation was, I confess, surprise to feel the air-ship going straight ahead. It was astonishing to feel the wind in my face. In spherical ballooning we go with the wind, and do not feel it. True, in rising and descending the spherical balloonist feels the friction of the atmosphere, and the vertical oscillation makes the flag flutter, but in the horizontal movement the ordinary balloon seems to stand still, while the earth flies past under it.

As my air-ship ploughed ahead the wind struck my face and fluttered my coat, as on the deck of a transatlantic liner, though in other respects it will be more accurate to liken aerial to river navigation with a steamboat. It is not like sail navigation, and all talk about "tacking" is meaningless. If there is any wind at all it is in a given direction, so that the analogy with a river current is complete. When there is no wind at all we may liken it to the navigation of a smooth lake or pond. It will be well to understand this matter.