![\"Alberto](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/1\/18\/Alberto_Santos-Dumont_by_Zaida_Ben-Yusuf.jpg\/1280px-Alberto_Santos-Dumont_by_Zaida_Ben-Yusuf.jpg\")
The Man Who Dined in the Air<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Santos-Dumont came to Paris from Brazil in 1891, the son of a wealthy coffee plantation owner. He was captivated by the machinery of the Belle \u00c9poque \u2014 the motorcycles, automobiles, and early aircraft he found there \u2014 and threw himself into aviation with the energy and wealth of a man who had never been told anything was impossible. By 1898 he was flying his own airship designs over Paris, steering them with a rudder and a small petrol engine, navigating between buildings and around monuments as casually as someone on a bicycle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
His personal airship, Number 9 \u2014 nicknamed La Baladeuse<\/em>, the Stroller \u2014 was small enough to tie to a lamppost outside a restaurant while he ate. He reportedly did exactly this on multiple occasions, mooring outside Maxim’s on the Rue Royale while he dined inside. Paris society was delighted. He became a celebrity of the first order, invited everywhere, photographed constantly, and celebrated as proof that the future was already here.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n \n\u201cI cannot describe the delight, the wonder and intoxication of this free diagonal movement onward and upward, or onward and downward.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Alberto Santos-Dumont, describing his first solo flight<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n While the Wright Brothers were conducting their historic flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903 and Huffman Prairie in 1904 and 1905, they were doing so in secret \u2014 no press, no public witnesses, no independent verification. The aviation community in Europe had largely not accepted their claims. The Wrights had patents to protect and competitors to defeat; publicity was not their priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Santos-Dumont operated entirely differently. When he turned to heavier-than-air flight in 1906, he did it in public, in front of crowds, at the Bagatelle field in the Bois de Boulogne. His aircraft, the 14-bis \u2014 a box-kite biplane pushed by a 50-horsepower Antoinette engine \u2014 made its first flights in September and October 1906, watched by members of the A\u00e9ro-Club de France and hundreds of spectators. On November 12, 1906, he flew 220 metres in 21.5 seconds \u2014 the first officially observed and recorded powered heavier-than-air flight in the world, setting the first aviation records ever recognised by the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration A\u00e9ronautique Internationale.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The Wright Brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk three years earlier. Santos-Dumont’s supporters \u2014 and Brazil \u2014 argue to this day that public, independently witnessed flight is the only flight that counts, since unverified private claims cannot be confirmed. The debate still burns in aviation history circles. What’s undeniable is that it was Santos-Dumont’s 14-bis flights in Paris that convinced the European public \u2014 and much of the world \u2014 that heavier-than-air flight was real.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n His most elegant creation came in 1907: the Demoiselle, a tiny monoplane that weighed 110 kilograms and flew at up to 95 kilometres per hour. It was practical, easy to build, and genuinely useful. Santos-Dumont published the plans freely \u2014 he refused to patent his inventions, believing that aviation should benefit all of humanity. Dozens were built by others from his plans.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Then, in 1910, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He retired from flying. The First World War began in 1914 and he watched Brazilian aircraft bomb rebel positions, killing civilians. The horror of seeing his invention used for killing devastated him. He became increasingly reclusive and depressed. In 1932, during a Brazilian revolution, he watched government planes bombing rebel positions from his hotel window in S\u00e3o Paulo. Shortly after, he was found dead. He had taken his own life at age 59.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Brazil declared three days of national mourning. He is still on the Brazilian fifty-cent coin. In a country that considers the aircraft, not the balloon, to be the founding moment of aviation \u2014 and considers Kitty Hawk an unverified claim by reclusive American mechanics \u2014 Santos-Dumont remains the father of flight. The argument has never been settled, and perhaps never will be. But no one disputes that he made Paris the capital of aviation, and that he did it with the combination of genius, generosity, and joy that the city has always rewarded.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\nThe 14-bis and the European First<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The Demoiselle and the Tragedy of Success<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n