Alberto Santos-Dumont (self-stylised as Alberto Santos=Dumont; 20 July 1873 – 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian aeronaut, sportsman, inventor, and one of the few people to have contributed significantly to the early development of both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air aircraft. The heir of a wealthy family of coffee producers, he dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life. He designed, built, and flew the first powered airships and won the Deutsch prize in 1901, when he flew around the Eiffel Tower in his airship No. 6, becoming one of the most famous people in the world in the early 20th century.
Santos-Dumont then progressed to powered heavier-than-air machines and on 23 October 1906 flew about 60 metres at a height of two to three metres with the fixed-wing 14-bis (also dubbed the Oiseau de proie—"bird of prey") at the Bagatelle Gamefield in Paris, taking off unassisted by an external launch system. On 12 November in front of a crowd, he flew 220 metres at a height of six metres. These were the first heavier-than-air flights certified by the Aeroclub of France, the first such flights officially witnessed by an aeronautics recordkeeping body, and the first of their kind recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical aeroplane. Numerous roads, plazas, schools, monuments, and airports there are dedicated to him, and his name is inscribed on the Tancredo Neves Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom.
He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1931 until his suicide in 1932.
Alberto Santos-Dumont was the sixth child of Henrique Dumont, an engineer who graduated from the Central School of Arts and Manufactures in Paris, and Francisca de Paula Santos. The couple had eight children, three sons and five daughters: Henrique dos Santos-Dumont, Maria Rosalina Dumont Vilares, Virgínia Dumont Vilares, Luís dos Santos Dumont, Gabriela, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Sofia, and Francisca. In 1873, the family moved to the small town of Cabangu, in the municipality of João Aires, for Henrique Dumont to work on the construction of the D. Pedro II railroad. The construction work finished when Alberto was 6, and the family moved to São Paulo. Here he began to show signs of his aeronautical interest; according to his parents, at the age of one he used to puncture rubber balloons to see what was inside. He was baptised in Valença at the Matriz de Santa Teresa on 20 February 1877, by Teodoro Teotônio da Silva Carolina.
In 1879, the Dumonts sold their farm in Valença, Rio de Janeiro, and settled in Sítio do Cascavel, in Ribeirão Preto, where they bought the Arindeúva Farm, of José Bento Junqueira, producing 1200 bushels of coffee. Until he was 10, he was taught by his older sister, Virginia. From 10 to 12 years old he studied at Colégio Culto à Ciência. He then attended Colégio Kopke in São Paulo, Colégio Morton, and Colégio Menezes Vieira in Rio de Janeiro, and later the School of Engineering from Minas, without finishing the course. He was not considered an outstanding student, studying only what interested him, and extending his studies independently in his father's library. By this time he already displayed the refined manners that would later become part of his image in France, and an introverted personality. He saw his first human flight in São Paulo at the age of 15, in 1888, when the aeronaut Stanley Spencer ascended in a spherical balloon and parachuted down. After a family trip to Paris in 1891, he became interested in mechanics, especially the internal combustion engine. From then on, he never stopped searching for alternatives, receiving from the City Council of Ribeirão Preto, according to Law no. 100, of 4 November 1903, a million réis subsidy to continue his researches that, three years later, resulted in the creation of his aeroplane. A newspaper of the time stated that Santos-Dumont would only accept if "...that amount was intended for an aircraft contest prize."
Santos-Dumont would remember with nostalgia the times spent on his father's farm, where he enjoyed the greatest freedom:
I lived a free life there, which was indispensable to form my temperament and taste for adventure. Since childhood I had a great love for mechanical things, and like all those who have or think they have a vocation, I cultivated mine with care and passion. I always played at imagining and building little mechanical devices, which entertained me and earned me high regard in the family. My greatest joy was taking care of my father's mechanical installations. That was my department, which made me very proud.
At the age of seven Santos-Dumont was already driving the farm's trains, and at twelve he could operate a locomotive on his own, but the speed achievable on land was not enough for him. By observing coffee machines he deduced that oscillatory machines wore out more, while those with circular motion were more efficient.
By reading the works of Jules Verne, with whose fictional heroes he was later compared and whom he would meet in adulthood, Santos-Dumont got the desire to conquer the air. The submarines, balloons, ocean liners, and vehicles that the novelist envisioned in his works made a deep impression on the boy's mind. Years later, as an adult, he still remembered the adventures lived in imagination:
With Captain Nemo and his shipwrecked guests I explored the depths of the sea in that first of all submarines, the Nautilus. With Phileas Fogg I went round the world in eighty days. In "Screw Island" and "The Steam House" my boyish faith leaped out to welcome the ultimate triumphs of an automobilism that in those days had not as yet a name. With Hector Servadoc I navigated the air.
Technology fascinated him. He began building kites and small aeroplanes powered by a propeller driven by twisted rubber springs, as he says in a commentary on the letter he received the day he won the Deutsch prize, recalling his childhood: "This letter brings back to me the happiest days of my life, when I exercised myself in making light aeroplanes with bits of straw, moved by screw propellers driven by springs of twisted rubber, or ephemeral silk-paper balloons." (Santos-Dumont) Every year, on 24 June he would fill whole fleets of tiny silk balloons over the bonfires of St. John, to watch them climbing into the sky.
Mountaineering, motorsports and ballooning
In 1891, when he was 18, Santos-Dumont visited Europe. In England he spent a few months practising his English, and in France he climbed Mont Blanc. This adventure, at an altitude of almost 5,000 metres, gave him a taste for heights. The following year, his father had a serious accident, and released Alberto from parental care on 12 February 1892, advising him to focus on learning mechanics, chemistry, and electricity. With that, Alberto left the Ouro Preto Mining Engineering School and returned to France where he took part in motor racing and cycling. He also began technical and scientific studies with a professor of Spanish origin named Garcia. In 1894 Santos-Dumont travelled to the United States, visiting New York, Chicago, and Boston. Around this time he went on to study at Merchant Venturers' Technical College, but never graduated. Agenor Barbosa described Santos-Dumont in this period as a "student of little diligence, or rather, not at all studious for 'theories', but of admirable practical and mechanical talent and, since then, revealing himself in everything, of inventive genius", but who was later described by Agenor as someone focused on aviation from when "...'explosion engines' began to succeed."
In 1897, independent and heir to an immense fortune which he invested in the development of his projects, applied in the stock market, allowing him to work without being accountable to any investor. At 24 years of age, Santos-Dumont left for France, where he hired professional aeronauts to teach him ballooning after reading the book Andrée – Au Pôle Nord en ballon. On 23 March 1898, he made his first ascent in a Lachambre & Machuron balloon at a cost of 400 francs, later saying that: "I will never forget the genuine pleasure of my first balloon ascent". That year, even before he was known as a balloonist, he began to be quoted by the media due to his involvement in motor racing.