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Updated: June 7, 2025
Ferber's chief contemporaries in France were Santos-Dumont, of airship fame, Henri and Maurice Farman, Hubert Latham, Ernest Archdeacon, and Delagrange.
"Well, Miss Watkins," he said, in a tone such as one would use to call down Santos-Dumont, "I’m mighty glad to see you looking so well." Aunt Mary turned the goggles full upon him. "A present from Mr. Clover," she said smiling.
The propeller was 24 feet in diameter and only made 46 revolutions to the minute. This was the first time electricity was used as a motor force, and mighty possibilities were conceived. In 1901 a young Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, made a spectacular flight.
There was a roaring noise in the rear, and up shot De Tromp in the Farman, and Loi Tong, the little Japanese, in the Santos-Dumont. Truly the race was going to be a hotly contested one. But the end was far off yet. After the first jockeying for a start and position, the race settled down into what might be termed a "grind."
While Santos-Dumont was tinkering with the engine, leaving the steering wheel to itself, the balloon drifted over the Bois de Boulogne. As usual the cool air from the wood caused the hydrogen in the balloon to contract and the craft dropped until it appeared the voyage would end in the tree tops.
Santos-Dumont was the more alert intellectually for he was still in the flood tide of successful demonstration with his balloons when he saw and grasped the promise of the airplane and shifted his activities to that new field in which he won new laurels. Zeppelin won perhaps the wider measure of immediate fame, but whether enduring or not is yet to be determined.
And a trailer is impracticable when navigating great heights. For these reasons the development of the balloon lagged, until Count Zeppelin and M. Santos-Dumont consecrated their fortunes, their inventive minds, and their amazing courage to the task of perfecting a dirigible.
Seated on his unguarded bicycle seat, and holding on to the handle-bars, to which were attached the rudder-cords, Santos-Dumont made voyages in the air with all the assurance of the sailor on the sea. But No. 4 was soon too imperfect for the exacting Brazilian, and in April, 1901, he had finished No. 5.
The first to achieve success was M. Santos-Dumont, the famous Brazilian pioneer-designer of airships, who, on November 12th, 1906, made several flights, the last of which covered a little over 700 feet.
So far as the development of dirigible balloons is concerned there is no more need to devote space to what was done in England and the United States than there was for the famous chapter on Snakes in Iceland. The year that witnessed the first triumphs of Santos-Dumont saw also the beginning of the success of his great German rival, the Count von Zeppelin.
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