Santos-Dumond and Flight?

[Atticus_Finch]

A Brazilian friend of mine was recently insisting that a Brazilian by the name of Alberto Santos-Dumond should be recognized over the Wright Brothers as the true inventor of modern flight.

What’s the story here? About everything I’ve googled is in Portuguese, so I’d appreciate some help…

(a link to a book about Santos-Dumond)

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Alberto Santos-Dumont. Note the spelling.

He finally achieved his dream of flying in an airplane in October of 1906, when, before a large crowd and a set of official witnesses, his 14 Bis flew a distance of 60 metres at a height of 2 to 3 metres. At the time, this was believed by most of the world to be the first airplane flight ever made. It was undoubtedly the first public airplane flight ever made.

In fact, the Wright brothers had been flying since 1903. However, the Wrights had taken great pains to keep their work secret and only a few people had witnessed their flights. Indeed, there were rumors about the Wrights’ accomplisment, but they were not generally believed, even in the US, at the time. Over the preceeding decades, there had been a great many aviation frauds and hoaxes. Few observers gave the Wrights’ claims serious consideration until they made a series of spectacular public flights in 1908. (Santos-Dumont and the Wright brothers never met, even though they had heard of each other’s work.)

Eventually, and after much controversy, most of the world accepted that the Wrights had indeed flown a heavier-than-air craft before Santos-Dumont. To this day, this remains a sore spot for Brazilians, to whom Santos-Dumont is still known as the Father of Aviation.

[bbeaty]

@Exapno Mapcase

In fact, the Wright brothers had been flying since 1903. However, the Wrights had taken great pains to keep their work secret and only a few people had witnessed their flights.

This stuff about secrecy is flat out wrong.

The Wrights were only secretive in 1903 at Kitty Hawk. In 1904 they returned to Dayton and spent almost a year flying in an open field a few miles outside the city. They were inviting newspaper reporters, were viewed by large numbers of people in trains on the nearby rail line, etc.

For example, see:

Huffman Prairie 1904
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Wright_Bros/1904/WR7.htm

The Dayton newspaper ignored them even though the local people were writing so many letters that the news people complained of the nusiance. The US Government also ignored them, not only refusing cut a deal for experimental aircraft, but refusing to send anyone to witness the flights. The NY Times and Scientific American magazine labeled them the “Lying Brothers” yet never bothered to send reporters to check out their claims. Finally the Wrights gave up on the US and took their machines to Paris, where they became an overnight sensation.

Yet I keep seeing articles about the Wrights which mention this “secrecy.” I suspect that this mistake is a piece of face-saving on the part of early authorities who refused the Wrights invitiations. Rather than admitting that the Wrights spent a whole year flying their machine in an open field, and were ignored, the newsmen and historians can cover up their own blunder; insisting that the Wrights were “secretive.”

[Little_Nemo]

Another issue is what exactly constituted a flight. The Wright flyer that flew at Kitty Hawk, for example, was launched down a hill and flew in a straight line. Some of Santos-Dumont’s supporters argue that this was essentially a powered glide not a true flight.

A piece of trivia: In addition to his work on aircraft, Santos-Dumont also developed the modern wristwatch.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

bbeaty, I don’t want to hijack this thread any further, and I’m not going to overly defend an incidental sentence irrelevant to the answer to the OP.

But the Wrights were certainly obsessed about others stealing their work. They had progressed beyond others and knew it. While they were not shy about flying their planes in front of observers, they took care not to let just anyone watch them. And they were also unlucky. I believe they never had a successful flight (before Santos-Dumont flew) when a reporter was watching.

Scientific American did publish a report of the first flight - reproduced recently in their 100 Years Ago column. It was later that they turned so strongly against them. But by 1907, they admitted the truth after interviewing many of the Ohio and North Carolina witnesses you mention.

And the Wrights refused for many years to accept invitations to Europe - again because they were afraid that others would steal their innovations - even when it would have settled their priority. When they did go they amazed everyone, of course, including Santos-Dumont. But that wasn’t until 1908.

So secrecy may not be the best term to apply - but in some ways not so wrong either.

Unlike Little Nemo, who is flat wrong on both counts.

From the biography that lambchops linked to:

On their first trial, a sixty-foot hop on December 14, the rail was inclined down a sand dune, so that gravity would help the Flyer pick up speed. But the Wrights deliberately laid the rail flat on the four trials on December 17, so that they could claim their place in history as the first to fly unassisted.

Hoffman also makes clear that Santos-Dumont did not develop any wristwatch. It appears that men first wore wristwatches during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 because officers found both hands often too busy to pull a watch out of a pocket. Soon after, wristwatches became a fashion accessory for women in Paris.

Santos-Dumont, observing the women, asked his friend Louis Cartier, of the famous jewelers, to make him a wristwatch because his hands were also both busy flying his airships. Cartier did so in 1904. This would later lead to a fad for “Santos” watches, but of Cartier design and manufacture.