Names to Remember

Alberto dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life. In his early career he designed, built and flew hot air balloons and early dirigibles, culminating in his winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize on 19 October 1901 for a flight that rounded the Eiffel Tower. He then turned to heavier-than-air machines and on 23 October 1906 his 14-bis made the first powered heavier-than-air flight in Europe to be certified by the Aéro-Club de France and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. His conviction that aviation would usher in an era of worldwide peace and prosperity led him to freely publish his designs and forego patenting his various innovations.

Early life

Alberto was fascinated by machinery and as a child he learned to drive the plantation’s steam tractors and locomotives. He also read a great deal of the works of Jules Verne. He wrote in his autobiography that the dream of flying came to him whilst contemplating the magnificent skies of Brazil from the plantation. After basic instruction with private tutors, Alberto studied for a time at the Colégio Culto à Ciência in Campinas, after which he was sent to the Colégio Morton in São Paulo and the Escola de Minas in Minas Gerais.

Move to France

In 1891, Santos-Dumont’s father Henriques was partially paralysed after a fall from a horse. He sold the plantation and travelled to Europe with his wife and Alberto in search of treatment. In Paris, Alberto contacted a balloonist with the intention of making an ascent. The price quoted was 1,200 Francs for a two-hour flight, plus payment for any damage caused and for returning the balloon to Paris. As this was a considerable sum of money Alberto decided not to make the flight,

Whilst living in Paris in the early 20th century, Alberto Santos-Dumont cemented his reputation as the world’s first gentleman aviator. The flamboyant, impeccably dressed Brazilian, born in 1873, used money from his family’s coffee planting fortune to fly hot air balloons and build ground-breaking motor-powered dirigibles. (A dirigible is any self-propelled, lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered.) reasoning that: “If I risk 1,200 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 will not have the means.” After this he bought a Peugeot automobile, which he took with him when he returned to Brazil with his parents at the end of that year.

In 1892 the family returned to Europe, but Henriques felt too ill to continue from Lisbon to Paris and Alberto made the journey on his own. Henriques’ health deteriorated even further and he returned to Brazil, where he passed away on 30 August 1892. For the next four years Alberto lived in Paris, studying physics, chemistry, mechanics and electricity with the help of a private tutor, whilst returning to Brazil for short holidays.

As a life-long bachelor, Alberto appeared to have a particular affection for a married Cuban American woman named Aida de Acosta, who in 1903 became the only other person that he ever permitted to fly one of his airships. Until the end of his life, he kept a picture of her on his desk alongside a vase of fresh flowers. Nonetheless, there is no indication that Alberto and Acosta stayed in touch after her flight and upon his death she was reported as saying that “she hardly knew him.”

Back in France

On arrival in Paris Alberto contacted Lachambre and Machuron and arranged to make a flight, piloted by Alexis Machuron. Taking off from Vaugirard, the flight lasted nearly two hours during which the balloon travelled 100 km (62 miles), coming down in the grounds of

the Château de Ferrières. Enchanted by the experience, during the train journey back to Paris Alberto told Machuron that he wanted to have a balloon constructed for himself. Before this was completed, Alberto gained experience by making a number of demonstration flights for Lachambre. Alberto’s first balloon design, the Brésil, was remarkable for its small size and light weight, with a capacity of only 113 m3 (4,000 cu feet). In comparison, the balloon in which he had made his first flight had a capacity of 750 m3 (26,000 cu feet).

After numerous balloon flights, Alberto turned to the design of steerable balloons, which became known as dirigibles. These could be propelled through the air rather than drifting along with the wind. A dirigible powered by an electric motor named La France, capable of flying at around 24 km/h (15 mph) had been successfully flown in 1884 by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs, but their experiments had not progressed due to a lack of funding. Alberto’s first design was wrecked during its second flight on 29 September 1898 and he had even less luck with his second, which was abandoned after his first attempt to fly it on 11 May 1899.

A significant cause of the accidents to Alberto’s first two airships had been loss of pressure causing the elongated envelope to lose shape. Therefore, for his third design he adopted a much shorter and fatter envelope shaped airship and towards the end of 1899 he made a number of successful flights in it. Meanwhile, Alberto had an airship shed complete with its own hydrogen generating plant constructed at the Aéro-Club de France’s flying grounds in the Parc Saint Cloud. The zenith of his lighter-than-air career came when he won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize for the first flight from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in less than 30 minutes, necessitating an average ground speed of at least 22 km/h (14 mph) to cover the 11 km (6.8 miles) in the allotted time.

To win the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize Alberto decided to build a larger craft, the No. 5. On 8 August 1901, during one of his attempts, his dirigible began to lose hydrogen and started to descend and was unable to clear the roof of the Trocadero Hotel. Alberto was left hanging in the basket from the side of the hotel. With the help of the Paris fire brigade, Alberto climbed to the roof without injury, but the dirigible was a complete write-off. Alberto immediately ordered a replacement to be constructed.

After several more attempts on 19 October 1901, Alberto succeeded in making the return flight. Immediately after he reached Saint-Cloud, a controversy broke out regarding the precise timing of the flight: although he had reached his destination in under 30 minutes there had been a delay of over a minute before his mooring line was picked up. However, a satisfactory compromise was reached and Santos-Dumont was eventually awarded the prize, which he announced would be given to the poor of Paris. An additional 125,000 Francs along with a gold medal was awarded to him by the government of his native Brazil.

Alberto’s accident on 14 February 1902 with the Nº 6

Winning the de la Meurthe prize made Alberto an international celebrity. He would float his No. 9 Baladeuse along Paris boulevards at rooftop level, sometimes landing at a cafe for lunch. Parisians affectionately dubbed Alberto as ‘le petit Santos.’ The fashionable people of the day copied various aspects of his style of dress, from his high collared shirts to his signature Panama hat.

In 1904 Alberto shipped his new airship No. 7 from Paris to St. Louis in the USA to fly at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to compete for the Grand Prize of $100,000 which was to be given to a flying machine of any sort that could make three round-trip flights over a 24 km (15 miles) L-shaped course at an average speed of 20 mph

(32 km/h), later reduced to 15 mph (24 km/h). It was also necessary for the machine to land undamaged not more than 46 m (150 feet) from the starting point. Because he was the best-known aviator at the time, the Exposition committee went to great lengths to ensure his participation, including modifying the rules. In conjunction with this trip he was invited to the White House to meet US President Theodore Roosevelt.

No. 9 in Paris

However, upon arrival in St. Louis, Alberto found his airship’s envelope to be irreparably damaged. Although suspected, sabotage was never proved. Alberto did not participate in the contest after suspicion of the deed, a repeat of a similar incident in London, began to focus on Alberto himself. He left the Fair and returned immediately to France.

In 1904, after Alberto complained to his friend Louis Cartier about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch during flight, Cartier created his first men’s wristwatch, thus allowing Alberto to check his flight performance whilst keeping both hands on the controls. To this day Cartier, the luxury French conglomerate, still markets a line of Santos-Dumont watches and sunglasses.

Heavier-than-aircraft

Although Alberto continued to work on non-rigid airships, his primary interest soon turned to heavier-than-air aircraft. By 1905, he had finished his first fixed-wing aircraft design, as well as a helicopter. Alberto finally succeeded in flying a heavier-than-air aircraft on 23 October 1906, piloting the 14-bis, before a large crowd of witnesses at the grounds of Paris’ Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, for a distance of 60 metres (197 feet) at a height of about five metres (16 feet). This was the first flight of a powered heavier-than-air machine in Europe to be certified by the Aéro-Club de France and won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize for the first officially observed flight of more than 25 metres. On 12 November 1906, Alberto set the first world record recognised by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, by flying 220 metres (722 feet) in 21.5 seconds. On that date he became the first person to be filmed in an airplane in flight. As late as 1906 he was reported as stating that the Wright Brothers claim to have flown for thirty miles was mere bluff.

Monoplanes

Alberto’s final designs were the Demoiselle monoplanes (Nos. 19 to 22). These aircraft were used by Alberto for personal transport. The fuselage consisted of three specially reinforced bamboo booms, whilst the pilot sat on a seat between the main wheels of a tricycle landing gear. The Demoiselle was controlled in flight by a tail unit that functioned both as an elevator and a rudder with wing warping.

In 1908, Alberto started working with Adolphe Clément’s, Clement-Bayard company to mass-produce the Demoiselle No 19. They planned a production run of 100 units, but built only 50 and sold 15 for 7,500 Francs for each airframe. It was the world’s first series production aircraft. By 1909 it was offered with a choice of three engines: A Clement 20 hp; a Wright four-cylinder 30 hp (Clement-Bayard had the licence to manufacture Wright engines) and Clement-Bayard 40 hp designed by Pierre Clerget.The Demoiselle could achieve a speed of 120 km/h.

The Demoiselle could be constructed in only 15 days. Despite possessing a good performance, flying at a speed of more than 100 km/h, the Demoiselle was the final aircraft to be designed by Alberto. The June 1910 edition of the Popular Mechanics’ magazine published drawings of the Demoiselle and stated: “This machine is better than any other which has ever been built, for those who wish to reach results with the least possible expense and with a minimum of experimenting.” Later American companies sold drawings and parts for Demoiselles for several years.

Later years

In 1911, Alberto moved to the French seaside village of Bénerville (now Benerville-sur-Mer), where he took up astronomy as a hobby. After the outbreak of war in 1914 his German-made telescope and unusual accent led to accusations he was a German spy tracking French naval activity, whilst his rooms were searched by French police. Upset by the allegations and depressed about an illness he had contracted; Alberto burned all his papers and plans. For this reason, there is little direct information available about his designs today. Alberto spent much of the 1920s in Swiss and French sanatoria, though returning to Brazil at times.

Return to Brazil

For his arrival in Brazil on the luxury liner Cap Arcona in 1928, a dozen members of the Brazilian scientific community boarded a seaplane with the intention of paying him a flying welcome. The plane crashed with the loss of all on board. Unsurprisingly Alberto’s growing despondency deepened even further and he returned to Switzerland.

However, in 1918, Alberto bought a plot on the side of a hill in the city of Petrópolis, in the mountains near Rio de Janeiro where he had a small house built and filled with imaginative mechanical gadgetry including an alcohol-fuelled heated shower of his own design. The hill was purposefully chosen because of its great steepness as a proof that ingenuity could make it possible to build a comfortable house on an unlikely site. After building it, he used to spend his summers there to escape the heat in Rio, calling it A Encantada (‘the enchanted’) after its street, Rua do Encanto. The treads of the exterior stairs are hollowed alternately on the right and left, to enable people to climb them comfortably. The house is now a museum.

His death

In 1931, Alberto was visiting Switzerland again when his nephew went there to bring him back to Brazil. Seriously ill and said to be depressed both by his multiple sclerosis and also the use of aircraft in warfare during São Paulo’s Constitutionalist Revolution, on 23 July 1932 three days after his 59th birthday, Alberto hanged himself, in the city of Guarujá. After lying in state for two days in the crypt of the São Paulo Cathedral, his body was taken to Rio de Janeiro, where after a state funeral he was buried in the São João Batista Cemetery. However, his heart is preserved in a golden globe at Brazil’s National Air and Space Museum.

Alberto Santos-Dumont is certainly a name to remember.