My Airships; The Story of My Life. Alberto Santos-Dumont
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Alberto Santos-Dumont
My Airships; The Story of My Life
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664608093
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTORY FABLE THE REASONING OF CHILDREN
CHAPTER I THE COFFEE PLANTATION
CHAPTER II PARIS—PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS—AUTOMOBILES
CHAPTER III MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT
CHAPTER IV MY "BRAZIL"—SMALLEST OF SPHERICAL BALLOONS
CHAPTER V THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY DANGERS OF BALLOONING
CHAPTER VI I YIELD TO THE STEERABLE BALLOON IDEA
CHAPTER VII MY FIRST AIR-SHIP CRUISES (1898)
CHAPTER VIII HOW IT FEELS TO NAVIGATE THE AIR
CHAPTER IX EXPLOSIVE ENGINES AND INFLAMMABLE GASES
CHAPTER X I GO IN FOR AIRSHIP BUILDING
CHAPTER XI THE EXPOSITION SUMMER
CHAPTER XII THE DEUTSCH PRIZE AND ITS PROBLEMS
CHAPTER XIII A FALL BEFORE A RISE
CHAPTER XIV THE BUILDING OF MY "NO. 6"
CHAPTER XV WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE
CHAPTER XVI A GLANCE BACKWARD AND FORWARD
CHAPTER XVII MONACO AND THE MARITIME GUIDE ROPE
CHAPTER XVIII FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS
CHAPTER XX AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS
CHAPTER XXI THE FIRST OF THE WORLD'S AIR-SHIP STATIONS
CHAPTER XXII MY "NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT
CHAPTER XXIII THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR
CHAPTER XXIV PARIS AS A CENTRE OF AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS
CONCLUDING FABLE MORE REASONING OF CHILDREN
MY AIRSHIPS
INTRODUCTORY FABLE
THE REASONING OF CHILDREN
Two young Brazilian boys strolled in the shade, conversing. They were simple youths of the interior, knowing only the plenty of the primitive plantation where, undisturbed by labour-saving devices, Nature yielded man her fruits at the price of the sweat of his brow.
They were ignorant of machines to the extent that they had never seen a waggon or a wheelbarrow. Horses and oxen bore the burdens of plantation life on their backs, and placid Indian labourers wielded the spade and the hoe.
Yet they were thoughtful boys. At this moment they discussed things beyond all that they had seen or heard.
"Why not devise a better means of transport than the backs of horses and of oxen?" Luis argued. "Last summer I hitched horses to a barn door, loaded it with sacks of maize, and hauled in one load what ten horses could not have brought on their backs. True, it required seven horses to drag it, while five men had to sit around its edges and hold the load from falling off."
"What would you have?" answered Pedro. "Nature demands compensations. You cannot get something from nothing or more from less!"
"If we could put rollers under the drag, less pulling power would be needed."
"Bah! the force saved would be used up in the labour of shifting the rollers."
"The rollers might be attached to the drag at fixed points by means of holes running through their centres," mused Luis. "Or why should not circular blocks of wood be fixed at the four corners of the drag? … Look, Pedro, yonder along the road. What is coming? The very thing I imagined, only better! One horse is pulling it at a good trot!"
The first waggon to appear in that region of the interior stopped, and its driver spoke with the boys.
"These round things?" he answered to their questions; "they are called wheels."
Pedro accepted his explanation of the principle slowly.
"There must be some hidden defect in the device," he insisted. "Look around us. Nowhere does Nature employ the device you call the wheel. Observe the mechanism of the human body; observe the horse's frame; observe. … "
"Observe that horse and man and waggon with its wheels are speeding from us," replied Luis, laughing. "Cannot you yield to accomplished facts? You tire me with your appeals to Nature. Has man ever accomplished anything worth having except by combating Nature? We do violence to her when we chop down a tree! I would go further than this invention of the waggon. Conceive a more powerful motive force than that horse. … "
"Attach two horses to the waggon."
"I mean a machine," said Luis.
"A