Brazil

Alberto Santos-Dumont

Born:                            20 July 1873.

Died:       23 July 1932 (59 years old)

Occupation                          Aviator. 

Childhood

Santos-Dumont was born in Cabangu Farm, a farm in the Brazilian town of Palmyra. He grew up as the sixth of eight children.His French-born father was an engineer and made extensive use of the latest labor-saving inventions on his vast property. So successful were these innovations that Santos-Dumont's father gathered a large fortune and became known as the "Coffee King of Brazil."

Santos-Dumont was fascinated by machinery, and while still a young child he learned to drive the stem tractor and locomotive used on his family's plantation. He was also a fan of jules vern and had read all his books before his 10th birthday. Santos-Dumont wrote in his autobiography that the dream of flying came to him while contemplating the magnificent skies of Brazil in the long, sunny afternoons at the plantation.

  Dirigibles & Balloons

Santos-Dumont described himself as the first "sportsman of the air." He started flying by hiring an experienced balloon pilot and took his first balloon rides as a passenger. He quickly moved on to piloting balloons himself, and shortly thereafter to designing his own balloons. In 1898, Santos-Dumont flew his first balloon design.

After numerous balloon flights, Santos-Dumont turned to the design of steerable balloons, or dirigibles, that could be propelled through the air rather than drifting along with the wind. A dirigible capable of flying at around 24 km/h (15 mph) had been successfully flown in 1884, but their experiments had not progressed due to a lack of funding between 1898 and 1905, Santos-Dumont built and flew 11 dirigibles. With air traffic control restrictions still decades in the future, he would float along Paris boulevards at rooftop level in one of his airships, commonly landing in front of a fashionable outdoor cafe for lunch. On one occasion, Santos-Dumont even flew an airship early one morning.

The zenith of his lighter-than-air career came when Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch de la meurtheprize. This was 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 round trip distance of 11 km (6.8 mi) in the allotted time.To win the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize Santos-Dumont decided to build a bigger craft, the dirigible Number 5. On 8 August 1901, during one of his attempts, his dirigible lost hydrogen gas. It started to descend and was unable to clear the roof of the Trocadero Hotel. A loud explosion was then heard. Santos-Dumont survived the explosion and was left hanging in a basket from the side of the hotel. With the help of the Paris fire brigade, he climbed to the roof without injury.

Personal life

Santos-Dumont, a lifelong bachelor, did seem to have a particular affection for a married Cuban-American woman named Aida de Acosta. She is the only other person that he ever permitted to fly one of his airships. By allowing her to fly his No. 9 airship she most likely became the first woman to pilot a powered aircraft. 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 Santos-Dumont and Acosta stayed in touch after her flight. Upon Santos-Dumont's death, Acosta was reported as saying that she hardly knew the man.

Santos-Dumont is also known to not only have often used an equal sign (=) between his two surnames in place of a hyphen, but also seems to have preferred that practice, to display equal respect for his father's French ethnicity and the Brazilian-Portuguese ethnicity of his mother.

Death

Santos-Dumont – seriously ill, and said to be depressed over his multiple sclerosis (not confirmed) and the use of aircraft in warfare during Sao Paulo:s Constitutionalist Revolution,on 23 July 1932, committed suicide by hanging himself in the city of Guaruja in Sao Paulo.However, his mysterious death in circumstances not totally explainable, provides sound elements to question if he was not murdered instead.

After lying in state for two days in the crypt of São Paulo cathedral his body was taken to Rio de janero and after a State funeral Santos-Dumont was buried in the cemiterio sao joao batista. There are many monuments commemorating him in the country of his birth and elsewhere. His house in Petropolis, Brazil is now a museum In 1997, the U.S. PresidentBill Clinton referred to Santos-Dumont as the father of aviation, as a clear form of recognizing the importance of his work to the aviation industry and history of aircraft.

Pictures of Alberto Santos-Dumont