ALBERTO SANTOS DUMONT
Alberto Santos Dumont was born the 20th of July of 1873, in Cabangu, Brazil. He was the youngest of 11 children of a wealthy family. His father was the "Coffee King of Brazil", because he was the owner of the most successful coffee plantation of the country. And since he was a child, he was interested in aeronauthics.
At the age of 17, Alberto and his parents moved to Paris after selling the plantation following a tragic accident that left his father paralyzed.
Because France was the world leader in aviation research during the late 1800s, he went and study there at the age of 17, after their parents had sold the plantation. First, he was atracted by the balloons. He was recognised as a genius in 1890, when his dirigible Number 3 was able to takeoff, circle the Eiffel Tower a few times, and land without problems. Then he began building more balloons and successfully piloted two designs of his own: in 1898 he made a spherical balloon called Brazil, and with its second balloon, La Musique, won an award from the Aero-Club of Paris. In 1901, he won the Deutsch Prize of 100,000 francs, for being the first to fly with an own dirigible.The feat made him also a world-wide celebrity. His continued successes made himself very famous, that President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White House to meet him, in 1904.
Later, Santos Dumont experimented with dirigibles that carried engines to provide propulsion. By 1905, Alberto succeeded in building and flying eleven dirigibles of his own design.
A short time later he decided to construct airplanes.
With the first biplane he designed in 1906, he became the third man in the entire world to fly a powered aircraft. He won also the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize of 3,000 francs.
Later, in the same year, he flew the first flight over 300 meters in 21 seconds and won the Aero-Club de France prize of 1,500 francs.
A machine he produced in 1909 solidified Santos-Dumont's reputation as an airplane designer. The famous Demoiselle (or Grasshopper) monoplane was the forerunner of the modern light plane. While Alberto Santos-Dumont was certainly a gifted engineer who made valuable contributions to aviation, the claim that he made the first successful flight again appears to be fueled primarily by national honor.
Though Santos Dumont remained interested in aviation in 1910, he decided to stop flying, because he suffered multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, he became bitter and depressed. Then, he returned to his homeland in 1928, and as a result of bad luck, the floatplane chartered by the Brazilian government, who was named Santos Dumont exploded in flight, killing journalists and members of the intelligentsia
Finally, he hanged himself due to a deepening depression over his illness and his disillusion over the use of aircraft in warfare, at his home in Guaryja, the 12º of July of 1932.
