Aircraft and Submarines. Abbot Willis John
adopted by the brothers Robert in France as early as 1784. Their balloon further had a double skin or envelope, its purpose being partly to save the gas which percolated through the inner skin, partly to maintain the rigidity of the structure. As gas escapes from an ordinary balloon it becomes flabby, and can be driven through the air only with extreme difficulty. In the balloon of the Robert brothers air could from time to time be pumped into the space between the two skins, keeping the outer envelope always fully distended and rigid. In later years this idea has been modified by incorporating in the envelope one large or a number of smaller balloons or "balloonets," into which air may be pumped as needed.
The shape too has come to approximate that of a fish rather than a bird, in the case of balloons at least. "The head of a cod and the tail of a mackerel," was the way Marey-Monge, the French aeronaut described it. Though most apparent in dirigible balloons, this will be seen to be the favourite design for airplanes if the wings be stripped off, and the body and tail alone considered. Complete, these machines are not unlike a flying fish.
In England, Sir George Cayley, as early as 1810 studied and wrote largely on the subject of dirigibles but, though the English call him the "father of British aeronautics," his work seems to have been rather theoretical than practical. He did indeed demonstrate mathematically that no lifting power existed that would support the cumbrous steam-engine of that date, and tried to solve this dilemma by devising a gas engine, and an explosive engine. With one of the latter, driven by a series of explosions of gunpowder, each in a separate cell set off by a detonator, he equipped a flying machine which attained a sufficient height to frighten Cayley's coachman, whom he had persuaded to act as pilot. The rather unwilling aviator, fearing a loftier flight, jumped out and broke his leg. Though by virtue of this martyrdom his name should surely have descended to fame with that of Cayley it has been lost, together with all record of any later performances of the machine, which unquestionably embodied some of the basic principles of our modern aircraft, though it antedated the first of these by nearly a century.
We may pass over hastily some of the later experiments with dirigibles that failed. In 1834 the Count de Lennox built an airship 130 feet long to be driven by oars worked by man power. When the crowd that gathered to watch the ascent found that the machine was too heavy to ascend even without the men, they expressed their lively contempt for the inventor by tearing his clothes to tatters and smashing his luckless airship. In 1852, another Frenchman, Henry Giffard, built a cigar-shaped balloon 150 feet long by 40 feet in diameter, driven by steam. The engine weighed three hundred pounds and generated about 3 H. – P. – about 1/200 as much power as a gas engine of equal weight would produce. Even with this slender power, however, Giffard attained a speed, independent of the wind, of from five to seven miles an hour – enough at least for steerage way. This was really the first practical demonstration of the possibilities of the mechanical propulsion of balloons. Several adaptations of the Giffard idea followed, and in 1883 Renard and Krebs, in a fusiform ship, driven by an electric motor, attained a speed of fifteen miles an hour. By this time inventive genius in all countries – save the United States which lagged in interest in dirigibles – was stimulated. Germany and France became the great protagonists in the struggle for precedence and in the struggle two figures stand out with commanding prominence – the Count von Zeppelin and Santos-Dumont, a young Brazilian resident in Paris who without official countenance consecrated his fortune to, and risked his life in, the service of aviation.
CHAPTER III
THE SERVICES OF SANTOS-DUMONT
In his book My Airships the distinguished aviator A. Santos-Dumont tells this story of the ambition of his youth and its realization in later days:
I cannot say at what age I made my first kites, but I remember how my comrades used to tease me at our game of "pigeon flies." All the children gather round a table and the leader calls out "Pigeon Flies! Hen flies! Crow flies! Bee flies!" and so on; and at each call we were supposed to raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out "Dog flies! Fox flies!" or some other like impossibility to catch us. If any one raised a finger then he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called "Man flies!" for at the word I would always raise my finger very high, as a sign of absolute conviction, and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit. The more they laughed at me the happier I was, hoping that some day the laugh would be on my side.
Among the thousands of letters which I received after winning the Deutsch prize (a prize offered in 1901 for sailing around the Eiffel Tower) there was one that gave me peculiar pleasure. I quote from it as a matter of curiosity:
"Do you remember, my dear Alberto, when we played together 'Pigeon Flies!'? It came back to me suddenly when the news of your success reached Rio. 'Man flies!' old fellow! You were right to raise your finger, and you have just proved it by flying round the Eiffel Tower.
"They play the old game now more than ever at home; but the name has been changed, and the rules modified since October 19, 1901. They call it now 'Man flies!' and he who does not raise his finger at the word pays the forfeit."
The story of Santos-Dumont affords a curious instance of a boy being obsessed by an idea which as a man he carried to its successful fruition. It offers also evidence of the service that may accrue to society from the devotion of a dilettante to what people may call a "fad," but what is in fact the germ of a great idea needing only an enthusiast with enthusiasm, brains, and money for its development. Because the efforts of Santos-Dumont always smacked of the amateur he has been denied his real place in the history of aeronautics, which is that of a fearless innovator, and a devoted worker in the cause.
Born on one of those great coffee plantations of Brazil, where all is done by machinery that possibly can be, Santos-Dumont early developed a passion for mechanics. In childhood he made toy airplanes. He confesses that his favourite author was Jules Verne, that literary idol of boyhood, who while writing books as wildly imaginative as any dime tale of redskins, or nickel novel of the doings of "Nick Carter" had none the less the spirit of prophecy that led him to forecast the submarine, the automobile, and the navigation of the air. At fifteen Santos-Dumont saw his first balloon and marked the day with red.
I too desired to go ballooning [he writes]. 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 veranda 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. So, musing on the exploration of the aërial ocean, I, too, devised airships and flying-machines in my imagination.
From dreaming, the boy's ambitions rapidly developed into actions. Good South Americans, whatever the practice of their northern neighbours, do not wait to die before going to Paris. At the age of eighteen the youth found himself in the capital of the world. To his amazement he found that the science of aeronautics, such as it was, had stopped with Giffard's work in 1852. No dirigible was to be heard of in all Paris. The antiquated gas ball was the only way to approach the upper air. When the boy tried to arrange for an ascension the balloonist he consulted put so unconscionable a price on one ascent that he bought an automobile instead – one of the first made, for this was in 1891 – and with it returned to Brazil. It was not until six years later that, his ambition newly fired by reading of Andrée's plans for reaching the Pole in a balloon, Santos-Dumont took up anew his ambition to become an aviator. His own account of his first ascent does not bear precisely the hall-mark of the enthusiast too rapt in ecstasy to think of common things. "I had brought up," he notes gravely, "a substantial lunch of hard-boiled eggs, cold roast beef and chicken, cheese, ice cream, fruits and cakes, champagne, coffee, and chartreuse!"
The balloon with its intrepid voyagers nevertheless returned to earth in safety.
A picturesque figure, an habitué of the clubs and an eager sportsman, Santos-Dumont at once won the liking of the French people, and attracted attention wherever people gave thought to aviation. Liberal in expenditure of money, and utterly fearless in exposing his life, he pushed his experiments for the development of a true dirigible tirelessly. Perhaps his major fault was that he learned but slowly from the experiences of others. He clung to the spherical balloon