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 long after the impossibility of controlling it in
the air was accepted as unavoidable by aeronauts. But in 1898 having
become infatuated with the performances of a little sixty-six pound
tricycle motor he determined to build a cigar-shaped airship to fit
it, and with that determination won success.

Amateur he may have been, was indeed throughout the greater part of
his career as an airman. Nevertheless Santos-Dumont has to his
credit two very notable achievements.

He was the first constructor and pilot of a dirigible balloon that
made a round trip, that is to say returned to its starting place
after rounding a stake at some distance--in this instance the Eiffel
Tower, 3-1/2 miles from St. Cloud whence Santos-Dumont started and
whither he returned within half an hour, the time prescribed.

This was not, indeed, the first occasion on which a round trip,
necessitating operation against the wind on at least one course, had
been made. In 1884 Captain Renard had accomplished this feat for the
first time with the fish-shaped balloon _La France_, driven by an
electric motor of nine horse-power. But though thus antedated in his
exploit, Santos-Dumont did in fact accomplish more for the
advancement and development of dirigible balloons. To begin with he
was able to use a new and efficient form of motor destined to become
popular, and capable, as the automobile manufacturers later showed,
of almost illimitable development in the direction of power and
lightness. Except for the gasoline engine, developed by the makers
of motor cars, aviation to-day would be where it was a quarter of a
century ago.

Moreover by his personal qualities, no less than by his successful
demonstration of the possibilities inherent in the dirigible,
Santos-Dumont persuaded the French Government to take up aeronautics
again, after abandoning the subject as the mere fad of a number of
visionaries.

Turning from balloons to airplanes the Brazilian was the first
aviator to make a flight with a heavier-than-air machine before a
body of judges. This triumph was mainly technical. The Wrights had
made an equally notable flight almost a year before but n