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By : Mary Blume 
Man has triumphed in every sort of air and spacecraft with only the balloon, invented in the 18th century, still defying its aeronauts, as this past winter's attempts at nonstop round the world trips have shown.
In earlier times all seemed possible and was for Alberto Santos-Dumont who invented the steerable balloon or dirigible and in 1901 won a prize for a half-hour controlled flight around the Eiffel Tower and then moved on to the airplane, in 1906 winning another prize for the first heavier-than-air flight of more than 100 metres. "Le Petil Santos," as he was called, was the hero of Paris and of his native Brazil, appearing there on stamps and banknotes. Rio's airport was named after him, as was the still-produced Santos wristwatch, invented by his friend Louis Cartier because Santos tended to be too busy aloft to consult his pocket timepiece. 
He was a small, sleek man-about-town with large deluded dark eyes, the miracle being that his delusions came true even if the man himself resists capture in mere words. His latest biographer, Nancy Winters, a London-based novelist, poet, travel writer and air buff, wisely avoids trying to pin him down in her slim new book, Man Flies : The Story of Alberto Santos-Dumont (Bloomsbury), giving just an episodic account of his life and deeds. Earlier biographers failed, as did Santos himself in his own Dans l'air, which begins a description of the making of coffee with the words, "The berries of black coffee are red when they are green."
Born in 1873, the dreamy son of a plantation owner known as the Coffee King of Brazil, young Santos began thinking of balloons when he read Jules Verne and learned to operate and repair his father's equipment. At the age of seven he was driving traction machines, at 12 the locomotives of the plantation's 60-mile (100-km) railway. When he was 18, his father was paralysed in a riding accident and went to Paris for medical treatment where he died. Alberto, who had accompanied him, found himself on his own with a large fortune and his dreams. Paris of the Belle Epoque was enjoying balloon fever (a lady in Montmartre rose weekly in a captive balloon, seated on a settee and playing a violin) and Alberto quickly designed the Brazil in Japanese silk and bamboo, the smallest balloon ever made, weighing only 44 pounds (20 kg) and easily carried in his valise. No ascetic, he went aloft with substantial meals washed down with Champagne, coffee and Chartreuse, having practiced eating aloft by raising the dining table and chairs in his flat six feet from the floor. The Brazil remained his favourite, but it suffered, like all balloons then, from being uncontrollable. He invented a small engine and his yellow airships became a familiar sight, with Santos dangling in a basket, a bicycle seat and, at one point, simply a long pole. He had, a journalist observed, "an endearing oddness." Even with a steering device, descents were unexpected. He landed once on a window ledge on the Avenue Henri-Martin and another time in the tallest chestnut tree in the garden of Edmond de Rothschild, where he enjoyed a luncheon sent up by a neighbour, the daughter of the emperor of Brazil, while repairs were being made. He was widely known and respected for his oddity, outrage and wealth (he never took money for or patented any of his inventions). Since he rose early to avoid the winds, he could put in a full morning's ballooning before heading for his regular table at Maxim's for lunch. If the lakes and rose gardens of the Rothschilds and other friends were never safe from his unexpected landings, guests were royally entertained in his flat on the Rue Washington, off the Champs-Elysees, where he later had a landing platform installed. He called himself the sportsman of the air and in 1901 became an acknowledged hero for girdling the Eiffel Tower in a half-hour controlled flight, his third attempt. The streets were so crowded that men watching from bridges fell into the Seine. He gave his prize money away. Invited to be the first guest of honour of the Aero Club of Britain he received the usual adulation, except from Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail, who saw the dirigible as a threat : "England is no longer an island. There will be no more sleeping safely behind the wooden walls of England with the Channel our safety moat." With a newly improved model the No 6 (he made a total of 10 airships, nine really since he was superstitious about the number 8 and never named one that), he drove down to Monte Carlo to fly over the Mediterranean, which turned out to be tricky not only because of sudden winds but because the ruler, Prince Albert, wishing to be helpful in a chase yacht, sent up a dangerous blast of smoke and sparks that could have blown up the airship. (Santos later extinguished a dangerous flame in No 9 with his floppy panama hat.) He had experimented with a helicopter, for which no engine could be found, turned to making an airplane out of box kites and on 22 October 1906, flew for what more than 1,000 witnesses claimed was 60 metres (the judges were too excited to measure the exact distance). The following month, wearing the world's first ailerons - sewn into the back of his jacket and controlled by his samba-like movements - he flew for 220 metres in 21.2 seconds. The celebrations were thrilling: At that time no one knew about the brothers Wright. Another airplane, the Demoiselle, in bamboo and Japanese silk, could fit in the back seat of his car, and Santos flew magically where he wished, landing at friends' estates in time for lunch which, as Winters points out, no longer had to be taken in a tree. 
Then in 1908 Wilbur Wright came to Paris with an eye to selling his invention to the French government and began flying at Le Mans. Santos didn't bother to watch and never considered his record under threat. Everyone agreed that the Wrights were just commercially-minded hayseeds whose alleged world's first heavier-than-air flight in 1903, three years before Santos', lacked sufficient witnesses. Wilbur's personal lacks were graver still: He did not have l'elegance and l'esprit of Little Santos..
What finally brought down Santos was illness and his own fragile sensibilities. In 1909, aged 36, he was diagnosed as suffering from multiple sclerosis, bad enough: but with World War I he began blaming himself for the bombing from airships and airplanes. He burned all his papers and returned to Brazil. Winters doesn't record his reaction, which must have been devastating, to the crash of Britain's R101 airship on its maiden voyage, though she'does mention his tears when he had to turn down an invitation, because of ill health, to celebrate Lindbergh's triumph. He petitioned the League of Nations unsuccessfully to ban aerial warfare and newspapers recording crashes had to be kept from him because he felt personally responsible. In 1932 he heard the sound of dropping bombs during Brazil's civil war and could take it no longer. Choosing a tie of the sort he used to throw to cheering crowds he used it to hang himself. There was a state funeral and in his honour the fighting ceased for two days. Happily, he missed the Germans' tactical use of bombs during the Spanish Civil War and the horrors of carpet bombing in World War II. He left only a small estate, having spent most of his money on his inventions and on the thrilling notion that man could fly. |
| OTHER ARTICLES OF ASI MAY'98 ISSUE | News In Brief | Letters To The Editor | World Records | | Bear Cup '98 | | Did He Get It Right Before Wrights ? | | World Cup Event In Russia | | Jump On The Pole | | 1998 Maxmen International |  More articles on General Aviation
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