Alberto Santos-Dumont

“ Personally, I have felt not only fear but also pain and real despair in a spherical balloon. It has not been often, because no sport is more regularly safe and mild and pleasurable. Such real dangers as it has are confined usually to the landing, and the balloonist of experience knows how to meet them; while from its imaginary dangers in the air one is regularly very safe. Therefore the particular adventure, full of pain and fear, that I recall to mind was all the more remarkable in that it occurred in high altitude. ”

“ The choice of altitude is yours—whether to accept this current or mount higher and go with another. You may mount above the clouds, where one breathes oxygen from tubes, while the earth, in the last glimpse you had of it, seems to spin beneath you, and you lose all bearings; or you may descend and scud along the surface, aided by your guide rope and a dipperful of ballast to leap over trees and houses—giant leaps made without effort. ”

“ Instead of being carried on to fall on the Seine embankment I now found myself hanging in my wicker basket high up in the courtyard of the Trocadero hotels, supported by my air-ship's keel, which stood braced at an angle of about 45 degrees between the courtyard wall above and the roof of a lower construction farther down. The keel, in spite of my weight, that of the motor and machinery, and the shock it had received in falling, resisted wonderfully. The thin pine scantlings and piano wires of Nice had saved my life! ”

“ As my air-ship ploughed ahead the wind struck my face and fluttered my coat, as on the deck of a transatlantic liner, though in other respects it will be more accurate to liken aerial to river navigation with a steamboat. It is not like sail navigation, and all talk about "tacking" is meaningless. If there is any wind at all it is in a given direction, so that the analogy with a river current is complete. When there is no wind at all we may liken it to the navigation of a smooth lake or pond. ”

“ Yet it was easy steering, and I remarked with pleasure that going thus with the wind the pitching or tangage of the air-ship was much less. Though going fast with my propeller, and aided by the wind behind me, I felt no more motion, indeed even less, than before.
For the rest, how different were my sensations from those of the spherical balloonist! It is true that he sees the earth flying backward beneath him at tremendous speed. But he knows that he is powerless. The great sphere of gas above him is the plaything of the air current, and he cannot change his direction by a hair's-breadth. ”

“ When I built and navigated my first air-ships neither Aéro Club nor Deutsch prize were yet in existence. The two, by their rapid rise and deserved prominence, had brought the problem of aerial navigation suddenly before the public—so suddenly, indeed, that I was really not prepared to enter into such a race with a time limit. Naturally anxious to have the honour of winning such a competition, I had been forced on rapidly in new constructions at both danger and expense. Now I would take time to perfect myself systematically as an aerial navigator.
Suppose you buy a new bicycle or automobile. ”

“ I do not believe that, without such previous study and experience with a spherical balloon, a man can be capable of succeeding with an elongated dirigible balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium, to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. ”

“ In the long, sun-bathed Brazilian afternoons, when the hum of insects, punctuated by the far-off cry of some bird, lulled me, I would lie in the shade of the verandah and gaze into the fair sky of Brazil, where the birds fly so high and soar with such ease on their great outstretched wings, where the clouds mount so gaily in the pure light of day, and you have only to raise your eyes to fall in love with space and freedom. ”

“ Do the cords commanding rudder, motor, water ballast, and the shifting guide rope work freely?
Is the ballast properly weighed?
Looked on as a mere machine the air-ship requires no more care than an automobile, but, from the point of view of consequences, the need of faithful and intelligent surveillance is simply imperious. This very day all the highways of France are dotted with a thousand automobiles en panne, with their enthusiastic drivers crawling underneath them in the dust, oil-can and wrench in hand, repairing momentary accidents. ”

“ During my ascent with M. Machuron, while our guide rope was wrapped around the tree and the wind was shaking us so outrageously, he improved the occasion to discourage me against all steerable ballooning.
"Observe the treachery and vindictiveness of the wind," he cried between shocks. "We are tied to the tree, yet see with what force it tries to jerk us loose." (Here I was thrown again to the bottom of the basket.) "What screw propeller could hold a course against it? What elongated balloon would not double up and take you flying to destruction?" ”

“ So it is to-day with the automobile. Imagine the united labours and financial sacrifices of the engineers and manufacturers that led, step by step, up to the road-racing automobiles of the Paris-Berlin competition in 1901—the year in which the only working dirigible balloon then in existence won the Deutsch prize against a time limit that was thought by many a complete bar to success. ”

“ In 1891 it was decided that our family should make a trip to Paris, and I rejoiced doubly at the prospect. All good Americans are said to go to Paris when they die. But to me, with the bias of my reading, France—the land of my father's ancestors and of his own education as an engineer at the École Centrale—represented everything that is powerful and progressive.
In France the first hydrogen balloon had been let loose and the first air-ship had been made to navigate the air with its steam-engine, screw propeller, and rudder. ”

“ All he did was to demonstrate the impossibility of directing a balloon through the air."
"The only way would be to build a flying machine on the model of the bird," spoke up Pedro with authority.
"Pedro is a very sensible boy," observed the old planter. "It is a pity Luis is not more like him and less visionary. Tell me, Pedro, how did you come to decide in favour of the bird as against the balloon?"
"Easily," replied Pedro glibly. "It is the most ordinary-common sense. Does man fly? No. Does the bird fly? Yes. Then if man would fly let him imitate the bird. ”

“ Such inventors are afraid of nothing, because they have no idea of the difficulties of the problem. Had they previously journeyed through the air at the wind's will, and amid all the disturbing influences of atmospheric phenomena, they would understand that a dirigible balloon, to be practical, requires first of all to have the utmost extreme of simplicity in all its mechanism.
Some of the unhappy constructors who have paid with their lives the forfeit of their rashness had never made a single responsible ascent as captain of a spherical balloon! ”

“ When, for one reason or another—humidity gathering on the surface of the balloon, a downward stroke of wind, accidental loss of gas, or, more frequently, the passing of a cloud before the face of the sun—the balloon came back to earth with disquieting speed, the guide rope would come to rest in part on the ground, and so, unballasting the whole system by so much of its weight, stopped, or at least eased, the fall. ”

“ The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways, and the rows of houses look like children's playthings.
While my gaze was still held fascinated on the scene a cloud passed before the sun. Its shadow cooled the gas in the balloon, which wrinkled and began descending, gently at first, and then with [35] accelerated speed, against which we strove by throwing out ballast. ”

“ While over the house-tops I felt that it would be bad to fall, but as soon as I left Paris and was navigating over the forest of the Bois de Boulogne the idea left me entirely. Below there seemed to be an ocean of greenery, soft and safe.
It was while over the continuation of this greenery in the grassy pelouse of the Longchamps racecourse that my balloon, having lost a great deal of its gas, began to double on itself. Previously I had heard a noise. Looking up, I saw [96] that the long cylinder of the balloon was beginning to break. ”

“ Under the combined action of the propeller impulse, of the steering rudder, of the displacement of the guide rope, and of the two sacks of ballast sliding backward and forward as I willed, I had the satisfaction of making my evolutions in every direction—to right and left, and up and down.
Such a result encouraged me, and, being inexperienced, I made the great mistake of mounting high in the air to 400 metres (1300 feet) , an altitude that is considered nothing for a spherical balloon, but which is absurd and uselessly dangerous for an air-ship under trial. ”

“ Pedro reassured him. "He takes pleasure in it."
"No, my boy," said the planter; "man will never navigate a ship in the sky."
"But on St John's Eve, when we all make bonfires, we also send up little tissue-paper spheres with hot air in them," insisted Luis. "If we could construct a very great one, big enough to lift a man, a light car, and a motor, might not the whole system be propelled through the air, as a steam-boat is propelled through the water?" ”

“ Fresh from the troubling time limit of the Deutsch prize competition I amused myself frankly with my air-ship, making observations of great value to myself, but not seeking to prove anything to anyone.
The speed problem is, doubtless, the first of all air-ship problems. Speed must always be the final test between rival air-ships, and until high speed shall be arrived at certain other problems of aerial navigation must remain in part unsolved. ”

“ Before going on my first trip I had wondered if I should be sea-sick. I foresaw that the sensation of mounting and descending obliquely with my shifting weights might be unpleasant. And I looked forward to a good deal of pitching (tangage) , as they say on board ship—of rolling there would not be so much—but both sensations would be novel in ballooning, for the spherical balloon gives no sensation of movement at all.
In my first air-ship, however, the suspension was very long, approximating that of a spherical balloon. For this reason there was very little pitching. ”

“ Nothing is more delicious than lunching like this above the clouds in a spherical balloon. No dining-room can be so marvellous in its decoration. The sun sets the clouds in ebullition, making them throw [36] up rainbow jets of frozen vapour like great sheaves of fireworks all around the table. ”

“ In France, and in France only, are not only the authorities, but the great mass of citizens, so much alive to their advantage in the development of this national industry that, day by day, year in and year out, they permit ten thousand automobiles to go tearing through the highroads at a really dangerous speed. In Paris, in particular, one sees a "scorching" average in its great Park and its very avenues and streets that causes Londoners and tourists from New York to stand aghast. ”

“ When the Aéro Club of Paris laid out its grounds at St Cloud it was with the sole idea of facilitating the vertical mounting of spherical balloons. Indeed, no provisions were made even for the landing of spherical balloons, because their captains never hoped to bring them back to the St Cloud balloon park otherwise than by rail, packed in their boxes. The spherical balloon lands where the wind takes it. ”

“ One seldom has this thought in a spherical balloon, because we know that the danger in the air is nil: the great spherical balloon can neither suddenly lose its gas nor burst. My little air-ship balloon had to support not only exterior but interior pressure as well—which is not the case with a spherical balloon, as I shall explain in the next chapter—and any injury to the cylindrical form of my air-ship balloon by loss of gas might prove fatal. ”

“ Immediately on leaving the bay of Monaco I met the wind head on as I steered my course straight down the coast in the direction of the Italian frontier. Putting on all speed I held the rudder firm and let myself go. I could see the ragged outlines of the coast flit past me on the left. Along the winding road the two racing automobiles kept abreast with me, being driven at high speed.
"It was all we could do to follow the air-ship along the curves of the coast road," said one of Mr Dinsmore's passengers to the reporter of a Paris journal, "so rapid was its flight. ”