At this very moment, the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Alberto Santos=Dumont is taking place at the Brasília Air Force Base (which can be followed live on YouTube).
At the same time, Renato Oliveira, a brilliant biographer of Dumont who promises many new things about the aviator, and I investigated unpublished aspects of Dumont's life, such as his intention to travel to the Arctic and the first flights in the United States.
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| Hangar built for Santos=Dumont to store his airships on Long Island |
There is still much to be said about the period after winning the Detutch prize, November 4, 1901, such as:
-His trip to Monaco from the end of 1901 to February 1902, and consequent trip to London;
-Their tour of New York on April 19, with the number 6, when Mr. Boyce becomes the first man to fly in America (minutes before Leo Stevens);
-His return to Paris in February 1903 to build the N.7 and N.9;
-Return to the USA in the spring of 1904, with the rebuilt N.6 (possibly the N.8) and with the N.9 to sell to Mr. Boyce.
-Returns to France on May 28, 1904, to make preparations for a busy schedule for his third return to the USA;
- And finally, June 12, 1904, when S=D departs for the USA on his 3rd trip, with several scheduled activities, including the demonstrations in St Louis (aboard the SAVOIE), when everything is frustrated to see his N. 7 damaged.
In these almost four years of research, a photo emerged that definitely made me write this article about the Dreams of Santos=Dumont.
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| This incredible photo, in which Santos=Dumont appears holding a scaled airship, is moving because it shows the tangible symbol of all the passion and hard work invested to conquer flight, until then impossible. |
It's a picture of him holding a scale model of #6 in the Long Island hangar just before Mr. Boyce make the not-so-famous flight before Stevens (infamous indeed for Americans).
Dumont inspires the entrepreneurial spirit of every Brazilian, who sees in the great aviator a source of pride and inspiration.
That's why I decided to post today an article entitled 'Santos Dumont and his Methods for Transforming Dreams into Realities', which also has a video on Youtube (read it and watch it).
Santos Dumont and his Methods to Turn Dreams into Realities
Santos=Dumont was self-taught - He created his own methods to turn his dreams into reality.
THE LIGHTER THA AIR
At the end of the 19th century, no one would know whether or not it would be possible for man to fly, just as today it is impossible to say whether we will reach the moons of Jupiter, or a planet outside our solar system.
Santos=Dumont intended to explore all possibilities of flight known at the time, as well as those only imagined by Jules Verne in his fiction.
Flights with captive balloons lacked maneuverability and steerability. Henry Giffard put a steam engine in his airship, and tried unsuccessfully to drive it through the air.
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| Balão Brasil of Santos=Dumont |
Santos=Dumont’s father suffered an accident that left him a hemiplegic. Unable to take care of the farm, he decided to sell it for a pulp and paper company in Brazil. The sale took place in 1891, and the amount paid to its owner was a huge fortune, 12 thousand contos de reis. Still young S=D was emancipated and received part of his fortune.
Now he already had the technical and financial conditions to pursue his dreams.
Then he went to Paris, met the balloon builders Lachambre a Marchuron and began his flying adventures. He quickly mastered all the techniques he needed to drive a captive balloon through the air – his reports of these flights are fascinating, Santos Dumont saw wonders from up there.
It was then that he decided to order the smallest captive balloon ever made, with only 113 cubic meters of hydrogen it had the strength to lift only him from the ground.
The individual balloon, idealized by Dumont, had the purpose of enabling the next steps - to test the possibilities that would be validated or discarded, following a rigorous scientific process - and it had to be rigorous, because his life depended on how well designed his next project would be.
He saw in the wicker basket the perfect safety equipment, the shock of the sudden landings of the balloons were perfectly absorbed by its flexible and resistant structure.
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| L'Amerique |
The balloon ‘Brasil’ was tested and approved, however it had a problem - during the captive flight, the balloon flew at the whim of the winds and Dumont needed a bicycle to return from wherever he had landed. It was then that in less than 8 days of his inaugural flight with Brazil, Dumont arrived with his second balloon, the L'Amerique, with a capacity of almost 5 times more hydrogen.
With L'Amerique Dumont won his first prize, he took first place in the Aeronauts Cup for staying 22 hours in the air. This would become the first of many other important awards.
Once the first stage of his cycle of inventions had been mastered, Dumont could now soar through the skies monobracing his balloon and design new equipment, but he was still very uncomfortable with the lack of steering power over the captive balloon, with that he gives a new direction for his inventions. He decided to put the engine of his De Dion bouton tricycle, coupled to a propeller, in the wicker basket. So he could steer the balloon in whatever direction he wanted.
In what he considers his first scientific experiment, with the help of mechanics, Dumont hung the tricycle from a tree and revved it up, trying to see if torque and vibration would cause problems during flight. He realized that this would not be a problem, but he decided to modify his engine, duplicating it from one to two pistons.
Taking advantage of its now 3.5 horsepower, Dumont dismantled his tricycle and added an engine and carburetor to a nacelle, made up of a wicker basket and a 40cm propeller.
Dumont realized that a spherical balloon has a lot of drag and that it would fly better if his airship had a cylindrical shape like Guiffard's model. Sparks from the tricycle could ignite the hydrogen in the envelope, so he decided to pull it away from the nacelle by means of very long ropes, added a rudder to turn to port and starboard, envelope pressure control, and counterweights to steer the airship up and down.
The hydrogen in the envelope equalized the weight of the airship with its nacelle and ropes, sandbags were used to weighting the bow and stern. To make the dirigible rise, he released the stern bag and collected the bow bag, creating an imbalance causing the nose of the envelope to tilt upwards. The force of the engine pushed the dirigible upwards.
And to go down, he would do the opposite, he recolect the stern bag and release the bow bag, unbalancing the nose of the envelope downwards. Again, the power of the engine drove the airship to the ground.
It was the first time in human history that someone could control two other axes of flight:
1- Lateral axis controlling the pitch of the airship, allowing it to go up or down;
2- and the vertical axis, controlling the yaw to the right and left through the tail rudder;
The third axis of flight, the roll axis, will only appear on airplanes, we'll talk about them later.
Despite the numerous achievements with the number 1, there were a few more tweaks to the project that had to be made.
Even having a small ballon in the center of the envelope, which could be inflated at the sign of loss of tone, the elongated cylindrical shape of the number one meant that the center had little ability to remain intact, and when it did, it would bend in a V shape and fall directly to the ground.
Another very characteristic adjustment that made it leave number 1 and go to number 2 was to remove the rudder from the cables and place it in the stern of the envelope.
But still the envelope continued to bend in the center. It was then that he decided to make airship number 3, in the shape of a rugby ball. With this airship he achieved perfect flight autonomy, but still with little power and poor maneuverability.
Another important change that Santos=Dumont made with the N-3 was the lengthening of the bamboo shaft to consolidate engine, seat, ballasts more efficiently. With number 3 SD made several flights over Paris.
Dumont's method was simple and elegantly scientific, the modifications often coming from his multidisciplinary experiences.
He gradually became a better pilot, engineer and designer – all at breakneck speed.
It is from that moment on in his life that Dumont starts to conceive his inventions as extensions of his body, which would later make him known for being for a long time the only man to pilot the so-called “wearable aircrafts” with each innovation. Replacing the ropes tied to the wicker basket with key handles, he sought to improve item by item in a continuous process of efficiency and practicality.
With number four Dumont tested several innovations, abandoned the wicker basket as a central element and started to adopt rigid nacelles, when he realized the benefits of the rigid bamboo of number 3.
He also increased the volume of the envelope, first to 420 and then to 520 m3 of hydrogen.
In addition, it replaced sand ballast with liquid ballast.
Another important replacement was that of the engine, changing from his picturesque De Dion Boutton modified, first to a 2cl Buchet with 7hp and then to another 4cl Buchet with 16hp.
Number 4 brought great advances to his airships, but he still noticed some defects that needed modifications.
The first of these was a nacelle-like structure that could be a much more efficient nacelle to carry the fuel tank, liquid ballast tank and much more.
He also understood that the bicycle saddle did not have the necessary safety conditions compared to the simple and highly efficient resource that is the wicker basket.
And finally, due to constant colds that he got due to the wind generated by the propeller, he decided to change the layout, which no longer pulled the airship but started to push it through the air.
Meanwhile, Santos=Dumont and Emmanuel Aimé build a balloon called Le Fatum, with the aim of carrying out aerostatic balance experiments. It was a balloon with a detachable cuff made of frou-frou fabric, with black and white paint, called Thermosphére. It was an elongated aircraft 7 meters high and 310 cubic meters.
The first flight took place on May 30, 1901.
And behold, champion airships arrives
Its new nacelle is made of pine wood, attached to the Japanese silk envelope by means of piano strings. The seal of the involucre is a compound with latex, specially developed by the company La Chambre & Marchuron, so that Santos=Dumont has the best chances of winning the Deutsch prize – whose 11-kilometer route was to leave the Saint-Cloud Aerodrome, go around the Eiffel Tower and back in less than 30 minutes.
Santos=Dumont worked harder than anyone else to win the prize, he had no competitors to match, he successfully completed the long route on July 12, 1901, falling the next day in the chestnut trees of Baron de Roschild.
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| Santos=Dumont Dirigible N. 5 |
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| Santos=Dumont Dirigible N. 5 in details |
He continued his flights until he suffered a serious accident on August 8 at the Trocadero hotel.
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| Santos=Dumont Dirigible N. 6 in details |
Domont quickly fixed the number 5 by creating the number 6.
As usual, he made important changes, moving the basket and engine closer to the bow and increasing the tail rudder.
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| Santos=Dumont Dirigible N. 6 |
He had his first flight on September 6, 1901 and ended up winning the Deutsche prize on October 19 of the same year, becoming the first man to sail through the air.
COMPETITION & TOURING AIRSHIPS
N.7 was built to participate in the Louis World's Fair, an international exhibition held in the state of Missouri, in the United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904.
The airship was dispatched on June 6th, and encountered a series of setbacks before reaching the US. First, an exorbitant customs fee was charged to retrieve the boat and then it was found that the package arrived damaged. There are indeed suspicions of sabotage related to these incidents.
MISSING MEMORIES
From the end of 1902 on, Santos=Dumont passages are not very clarified. Unfortunately, Santos=Dumont's life could have been better documented, were it not for the episode in Benérville, on the French coast near the Balneario de Deuaville, in which he himself burns his documents, photos and personal objects.
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| It was the 1st airship to fly in America, piloted by Mr. Boyce on October 1, 1902 |
So it is accepted that maybe the airship No. 8, acquired by Boyce, is the modified No. 6, just as the No. 6 came from modifications to No. 5 after the August 8 accident. The criteria for numbering Dumont's dirigibles were never clear (see more).
With that, perhaps Nº 8 or Nº 6 was the first airship to fly on American soil, piloted and purchased by Mr. Boyce on October 1, 1902.
For chronology purposes I also include the explanatory drawing of number 8.
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| The first version of “La Baladeuse“ with a capacity of 220m3 of gas |
However, it was with balloon Nº9, called “La Baladeuse“, that Dumont began to realize several other dreams, flying like someone driving a chariot through the air of Paris (hence the name).
Since June 24, 1903, he had been flying at night with an enormous headlamp, made by his personal friend, the also famous Louis Blériot, stopping by her apartment for coffee, going to La Casacade to meet friends, even transporting people on his flights.
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The first woman to pilot an airship in history was Aida de Acosta, driving her number 9, on July 11, 1903.
Even taking great pleasure in fulfilling his dreams of personal flights, Dumont was a humanist, he understood that his inventions should not only serve his individual pleasures, flight was an achievement for humanity.
In this sense, in November 1903, he developed an Omnibus capable of carrying a few more pairs of wicker baskets in its nacelle to transport passengers.
There is no consensus whether number 11 was really this prototype, here recreated in George Cayley's design, of a 15-meter airplane that was supposed to fly with a 24 hp Levavasseur engine.
TRIP TO THE ARTICLE
The dream of living the adventures of Jules Verne never left his head. Inspired by Andrée's expedition to reach the North Pole in 1897, Dumont designs a balloon that combines hydrogen and hot air, with the aim of keeping gases at a good temperature and not falling like Salomon Andrée, on his third day of travel.
Another possible solution for not suffering from the pressure of gases in the cold could have been solved by replacing the upward force of the gas envelope with the propellers of a helicopter, supposedly associated with the number 12 by Henrique Lins de Barros and other biographers.
THE VARIOUS 14'ERS
Still with the intention of creating racing aircraft, simplifying and making their inventions more elegant, they were the watchword. Santos=Dumont presents his airship number 14 on the beach of Trouville - the smallest airship in the world.
Placing the propeller immediately in front of the basket and a short steering wheel, all in one set, it attracted attention due to the elongated shape of its 40-meter-long enclosure.
Then, I let Dumont explain his decisions regarding the airplane, in his own words:
"The reader will ask me why I didn't build it sooner, at the same time as my airships. It's just that the inventor, like Linnaeus's nature, doesn't make leaps; it progresses smoothly, it evolves. I started by making myself good free balloon pilot and only later did I attack the problem of its drivability. I became a good aeronaut in handling my airships; for many years I studied the oil engine in depth and only when I verified that its state of perfection was enough to fly, I tackled the heavier-than-air problem.
The issue of the airplane had been on the agenda for some years now; I, however, never took part in the discussions, because I always believed that the inventor must work in silence; strange opinions never produce anything good".
On July 19, Dumont began connecting the plane to the N.14 airship, calling it "14-bis" (a name that would become famous).
HEAVIER THAN AIR
After mastering everything about flying with the N14 in conjunction with the 14-bis, Santos=Dumont had already learned to pilot himself.
He got rid of the casing (N.14) and began testing a structure built on land he owned in Neuilly, with the help of the famous donkey Cuigno to take the plane back to its highest point.
Now that S=D already knew how to fly an airplane, it was finally time for test flights.
His dreams come true on September 4, 1906, when he flew for the first time in his plane number 14-Bis named Oiseau de Proie. It was small flights of 7 to 8 meters in the Campo de Bagatelle, but perhaps the happiest day of his life, as he finally managed to take off, with enough force to stay in the air.
Upon realizing that he needed the bearing axle (as we saw there arthras), he put ailerons on the tip of each wing.
This encouraged him to continue until on the 23rd of October he claimed the Archdeacon's cup, flying 60 meters away from three meters high - Dumont didn't stop there...
On November 12, 1906, he also won the prize of the Aeroclube de France.
AFTER 14-bis
Once again, Santos=Dumont was not satisfied with the flight of the 14-bis, much still had to be done.
Still in the spirit of competitions and with the intention of participating in the Gordon Bennett Cup, as well as giving continuity to the experiments to get rid of ballast in ballooning, started with Le Fatum, Santos=Dumont created Les Deux Ameriques, a spherical balloon with two horizontal propellers that played the role of ballast.
It raced on September 30, 1906, starting from the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Unfortunately, he didn't win the prize and decides to go back to flying with the N.15.
It was a wooden plywood airplane, it was 16 meters long and 2150 cubic m3, used a 6 horsepower Dion engine to drive two propellers.
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| Number 15, testing controls for the roll axis on March 21, 23 and 27, 1907. |
Even before the fall of 14-bis on April 4, 1907 in Saint-Cyr, Dumont was already carrying out tests with Number 15, testing controls for the roll axis on March 21, 23 and 27, 1907.
From June 1907 to March 1908, Dumont tests the N.16, a hybrid aircraft, with wings and casing, as light as air. The idea is to test engine power and flight controls.
with two 2-cylinder Darracq engines of 20 horsepower each.
In September 1907 Dumont doubled the power to 100 horsepower, putting a 16-cylinder Antoniette engine in the new aircraft number 17. It was never tested.
Some sources suggest that the nickname "La Sauterelle" may have been a reference to the shape of the folding wings, while others claim that the name came from the high landing gear.
The N18 came from a bet, Mr. Charron wagered 10,000 francs against Mr. Bleriot that it would not be possible to travel 100 km/h over water with any device before April 1, 1908.
Although Dumont was unable to win the bet due to his high jumps, the test of the hydrodynamic effects of N. 18, with its hydrofoils, simulated in water the relationship of resistance and lift that the wing shapes should have in the atmosphere.
At that time, Dumont made changes to practically every flight, each aircraft that took off was unique, his innovations happened at a fast pace.
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| S=D N. 19 model with 20 hp Dutheil & Chalmers engine with propellers more similar to current ones, flew 200 m. |
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| S=D N. 19 model with 20 hp Dutheil & Chalmers engine with propellers more similar to current ones, flew 200 m. |
The Aeroplano de Numero 19 - Built in 1907, performed flights in St-Cyr and Issy-les-Moulineaux on the 16th, 17th and 21st of November 1907, it was powered by a 2-cylinder Dutheil & Chalmers engine of 19 hp.
This model with two propellers combined with a central tripod, was designed to try to gain power and flight time, with the aim of winning the 1km Archdeacon prize.
Tests also carried out with a 30 horse Darracq.
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| S=D N. 19-bis model with 50 hp Antoinette engine |
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| Detalhes do Santos=Dumont N. 19-bis modelo com mtor Antoniette de 50 CV |
Another version of the Numero 19 called the 19 Bis was tested, with an 8-cylinder Antonette engine that weighed 180 kg, it did not fly.
This last plane number 19 was the last stage before the N 20, it had its first flight on March 1, 1909 in St Cyr, in this first format, giant crowns made a great rotation of the propeller, during the test one of the propeller blades detached, it was launched a great distance, until it was planted in the sandy soil, of a neighboring property.
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| S=D N. 19-bis 2 model with 30 hp Darracq mtor with tripod and two conjugated propellers |
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| Details of S=D N. 19-bis 2 model with 30 hp Darracq mtor with tripod and two conjugated propellers |
Already with propellers remade in the molds of modern propellers, Number 20 called "La Demoiselle", broke the record for the distance needed for takeoff on September 16, 1909, on September 17 of that year it flew to the castle of Wideville, it was 5.55 meters long, and 5.50 meters wide, weighing 115 kg.
After testing with different models, it tested different engines, including Dutheil & Chalmers with 2 cylinders and 30hp, Darracq with 30hp and Clement Bayard with 40hp.
Improving with each flight, as he always has, after only 8 years since he hung his tricycle on the tree, Santos=Dumont learns to fly in a balloon, design and build airships, and also invents, builds and flies airplanes.
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| Santos=Dumont N. 20, Demoiselle - in this configuration it carries an extra fuel tank to increase flight autonomy. |
As if that weren't enough, he makes the first airplane to be built in series, the Demoiselle, using open source culture, something that only in 100 years would be seen again.
That done, now finally, S=D dominates flying through the air with 'lighter' and 'heavier than air'.
Today, just 150 years later, the whole world is interconnected and reduced with more than 100,000 daily commercial flights on the planet.
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