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Updated: July 7, 2025
It will be urged, however, that for purposes of exploration some form of dirigible balloon is desirable, and we have already had proof that where it is not sought to combat winds strongly opposed to their course such air ships as Santos-Dumont or Messrs.
A secret it would be to-day, except that accident and the fortunes of war revealed the intricacies of the Zeppelin construction to both France and England. Santos-Dumont had the fire, enthusiasm, and resiliency of youth; Zeppelin, upon whom age had begun to press when first he took up aeronautics, had the dogged pertinacity of the Teuton.
It was characteristic of the man that to him the danger, the expense, and the discouragements counted not at all. In the afternoon of November 13, 1899, Santos-Dumont started on his first flight in No. 3. The wind was blowing hard, and for a time the great bulk of the balloon made little headway against it; 600 feet in air it hung poised almost motionless, the winglike propeller whirling rapidly.
On September 18, 1898, Santos-Dumont made his first ascension in his first air-ship in fact, he had never tried to operate an elongated balloon before, and so much of this first experience was absolutely new.
For twenty minutes Santos-Dumont maneuvered around the tower as a sailboat tacks around a buoy. While the people on that tall spire were still watching, the aeronaut turned his ship around and sailed off for the Longchamps race-course, the green oval of which could be just distinguished in the distance.
But in 1898 having become infatuated with the performances of a little sixty-six pound tricycle motor he determined to build a cigar-shaped airship to fit it, and with that determination won success. Amateur he may have been, was indeed throughout the greater part of his career as an airman. Nevertheless Santos-Dumont has to his credit two very notable achievements.
Of a sudden assured success was changed to dire peril; the automatic valves began to leak, the balloon to sag, the cords supporting the wooden keel hung low, and before Santos-Dumont could stop the motor the propeller had cut them and the whole system was threatened.
A propeller driven by a motor, the size and power of both to be as great as permitted by the lifting power of the balloon. A rudder capable of controlling the course of the ship. Santos-Dumont adopted all of these specifications, but added to them certain improvements which gave his airships he built five of them before taking his first prize notable superiority over that of Renard.
The total weight, including Farman as pilot, is given as 1,540 lbs., so that the machine was much heavier than either of the others; the weight per horse-power being midway between the Santos-Dumont and the Wright at 31 lbs. per square foot, while the wing loading was considerably greater than either at 3 1/2 lbs. per square foot.
The motor was running smoothly, the balloon skin was taut, and everything was working well; pulling the rudder slightly, Santos-Dumont headed directly for the great steel shaft. The people who were on the Eiffel Tower that breezy afternoon saw a sight that never a man saw before. Out of the haze a yellow shape loomed larger each minute until its outlines could be distinctly seen.
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