The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-11-21
NAVIGATOR OF THE AIR.
Wonderful Feats of VI. SantOs-Du-
mont in His Efforts to Perfect
"a Siderable Airship.

appears in the Century from the pen
of Sterling Heilig:
This young Brazilian inventor works
for the love of the thing, not for lucre.
He has never felt moved to apply for
single patent. He is a son of the
coffee king of Brazil, the proprietor
of the Santos-Dumont plantations of
Sac Paulo, the friend of the former
Emperor Dom Pedro and the bene-
factor and adviser of whole popula-
lions. Santos-Dumont, the father, al
though a Brazilian by birth and ma
tionality, was French by descent, and
had his technical education at the
Ecole Centrale (arts and industries)
in Paris. Thanks to his education,
he was the first to apply scientific
methods to Brazilian coffee-culture,
so that his plantations became the
most tlourishing in the land, having
100000 coffee-plants, occupying 5000
laborers, comprising towns, manufac-
tories, docks and steamships, and
served by 146 miles of private rail
roads. 1t was on these railroads that
the young Santos-Dumont, before he
was IL years of age, drove locomotive
engines for his pleasure, and devel-
oped the taste for mechanics and in
vention which saved him, coming
young and rich to Paris, from a life
of mere sporting leisure. Until 18
years of age, when he completed his
education at the University of Rio
de Janeiro, he remained in Brazil, al
ways returning in vacation-time to
the wild back-country of the planta-
ton, where he became mighty hunt
er, killing wild pigs and small tigers
by preference, and great snakes out
of sense of duty.
Arriving in Europe in 1891, he made
tourist trip, and assembled Mont
Blanc. A part of 1891 and 1892 he
spent between London and Brighton,
perfecting his English, which he now
speaks as well and as often as French;
but he always returned to Paris, where
in 1892 he was already driving auto
mobiles. In 1894 he made a short trip
| to the United States, visiting New
York, Chicago and BOSTON. He did not
~ III ''dliOCiIhS MN 1917, Ill tlt SuIll-
| mer of which year he made his first
ascent in company with the late NJ
Machuron. In the same year he made
20 other ascensions, number of them
unaccompanied, and became a reliable
pilot of spherical balloons. He has,
/ indeed, an ideal figure for the sport,
uniting remarkable strength, agility
and GOODNESS to his Jockeys weight of
scarcely 100 pounds. For this reason
he was able to lower the volume of
the Brazil" his first spherical bal
loon, to the unusual minimum of 113
cubic meters. The little Brazil was
always filled with hydrogen, and after
each ascension he never failed to bring
it back with him in his valise.
This Brazilian has neither the struc-
ture, the complexion nor the exuberant
gestures of the men of his country.
He is pale, cold and phlegmatic, even,
If the words may be applied to one so
active. In his moments of greatest en-
thusiasm and of most lively disap-
pointment he is always the same; and
he is as free from affectation as a
child. He has weakness for driving
dog-cart tandems, and something
which has had a vital influence over his
career as a balloonist-he has been an
intrepid automobile chauffeur from
the first.
He began with a Peugot roadster of
21s horsepower. He has since owned
and driven half a dozen automobiles of
continually increasing speed and power,
his longest trip without stop being
taken in 1898, between Nice and Paris,
and accomplished with a six horse
power Panhard in "a hours. Latterly
he has abandoned petroleum in favor
of electricity, in a dainty light-run-
ming American buggy manufactured in
Chicago. 1t serves him, he says, better
than the more troublesome teuf-teuf
for his morning spin through the Bots
and his afternoon errands from the
balloon-maker's at Vanguard to his
apartment in the Avenue des Champs
Elysee, and from the Aero clubs
ground at St. Cloud to the Automobile
club in the Place de la Concorde. 81
was once enamoured of petroleum au-
tomobiles, because of their freedom"
he explains. 'You can buy the essence
everywhere; and so, at a moments no.
tice, one is at liberty to start off for
Rome or st. Petersburg. But when
discovered that l did not want to go
to Rome or St. Petersburg, but only to
take short trips about Paris, l went
in for The electric buggy.
81 got my first idea of putting an
automobile motor under cigar-shaped
balloon filled with hydrogen gas while
returning from the Paris-Amsterdam
automobile race in 1897" he said, when
he began giving me this interview.
"From the beginning everybody was
against the idea. | was told that an
explosive gas-engine would ignite the
hydrogen in the balloon above it, and
that the resulting explosion would end
the experiment with my life. Lacham-
bre, my balloon constructor, went to
work without enthusiasm. So far from
others convincing me that their no.
tons were worth taking up as has
been said, / met with nothing but dis
couragment."
Fixing the Limit.
He (rather ent)-Er-now that
we are engaged, l suppose you-er-