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Updated: September 7, 2025
Like Marconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, and also, like the inventor of wireless telegraphy, he had the high intelligence and determination to win success in spite of many discouragements. Like an explorer in a strange land, Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in his work, each trial being different from any other, though the means in themselves were familiar enough.
The story of Santos-Dumont's experiments, however, his adventures and his successes, will show that the problem was not so simple as it seemed. Santos-Dumont was built to jockey a Pegasus or guide an air-ship, for he weighed but a hundred pounds when he made his first ascensions, and added very little live ballast as he grew older.
Santos-Dumont himself says that the world is still a long way from practical, everyday aerial navigation, but he points out the apparent fact that the dirigible balloon in the hands of determined men will practically put a stop to war.
The wind was drifting the air-ship toward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator had lost control; 500 feet below were the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide which was the least dangerous; there was but a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, death staring him in the face, chose the roofs. A swift jerk of a cord, and a big slit was made in the balloon.
Germany and France became the great protagonists in the struggle for precedence and in the struggle two figures stand out with commanding prominence the Count von Zeppelin and Santos-Dumont, a young Brazilian resident in Paris who without official countenance consecrated his fortune to, and risked his life in, the service of aviation.
The increase in power of the engines fitted to airships has made steady progress from the outset; Haenlein's engine developed about 6 horse-power; the Santos-Dumont airship of 1898 was propelled by a motor of 4 horse-power; in 1902 the Lebaudy airship was fitted with an engine of 40 horse-power, while, in 1910, the Lebaudy brothers fitted an engine of nearly 300 horsepower to the airship they were then constructing 1,400 horse-power was common in the airships of the War period, and the later British rigids developed yet more.
They, like Santos-Dumont, fitted a wheeled undercarriage, so that the machine was self-contained. The Voisin machine, then, was intended to be automatically stable in both senses; whereas the Wrights deliberately produced a machine which was entirely dependent upon the pilot's skill for its stability.
In spite of the narrow escape and the discouraging ending of his first flight, Santos-Dumont launched his second air-ship the following May.
The inventor immediately set about the construction of 'Santos-Dumont No. 3, on which he made a number of successful flights, beginning on November 13th, 1899. On the last of his flights, he lost the rudder of the machine and made a fortunate landing at Ivry. He did not repair the balloon, considering it too clumsy in form and its motor too small.
In his book My Airships the distinguished aviator A. Santos-Dumont tells this story of the ambition of his youth and its realization in later days: 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!
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