Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight

Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight
Paul Hoffman

This ebook does not include illustrations.From the author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, winner of the prestigious Rhone-Poulenc science award: the history of aviation told through the extraordinary story of Alberto Santos-Dumont, the forgotten man who battled to be the first to free himself from the confines of the earth.Ask most people who flew the first aeroplane and you'll get the same response: Orville and Wilbur Wright. But ask a Brazilian the same question and you will get a different answer: Alberto Santos-Dumont, the man they have crowned the 'father of aviation'.Fearless Alberto Santos-Dumont was a slight and wiry man who built flying machines that could hold no one heavier than himself and required a daredevil dexterity to stay aloft. Never before or since has there been an aeroplane in which the pilot has had to stand up for the whole flight (he had to perfect the rumba in order to get his Bird of Prey into the air at all). Nor has anyone else had a personal flying machine – a small powered balloon that he kept tied to a lamp post outside his apartment when he was not bar-hopping, handing the reins of the airship to the doorman at his favourite night spot. His genius and charisma led him to be celebrated in Paris, London and New York: he dined with the Cartiers, the Rothschilds and the Roosevelts, and fast became the darling of the press.With his blithe faith in the future of technology, Santos-Dumont did not foresee the destructive power of his beloved machines. Yet his indomitable spirit was slowly crushed as competition grew and the skies became full of hazardous aircraft. With the dawn of World War I, he saw their potential for devastation and began to blame himself for every fatality. The guilt placed too great a weight on his mind, and as he became distracted from his aeronautical dream, family and friends began to fear for his sanity. On his last attempt to fly he glued feathers to his arms and tried to launch himself through a window in a sanatorium.

PAUL HOFFMAN

WINGS OF MADNESS

ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT

AND THE INVENTION

OF FLIGHT

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_5bbe39c0-39a1-5403-91e0-fd33640d307f)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

Copyright © Paul Hoffman 2003

Paul Hoffman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

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SOURCE ISBN: 9781841153681

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007441082

Version: 2016-10-11

DEDICATION (#ulink_86f1c946-a173-541f-95a9-bb5860b0f1ca)

For Ann and Alexander and Matt

CONTENTS

Cover (#u8e60a129-51a0-521c-bf61-6e79b7dc9373)

Title Page (#udad70963-3a92-5fc2-a053-bfb5e3ca4dec)

Copyright (#uf117729c-47cb-55fe-bf95-e48d92cf8d72)

Dedication (#u70735527-f48f-5701-843f-793d8e6368f5)

Prologue Dinner on the Ceiling Champs-Elysées, 1903 (#uc0556cb7-95a6-53f8-bad7-7457d7d2590b)

1 Arrival Minas Gerais, 1873 (#u92136fc3-ee23-575a-bb84-eb284b82ec09)

2 “A Most Dangerous Place for a Boy” Paris, 1891 (#u0629c4a5-c7ea-5346-b23e-669e2b440f52)

3 First Flight Vaugirard, 1897 (#u541006cd-73bd-5305-bed3-efa84e7fa7a9)

4 Dying for Science Paris, 1899 (#u50e5b39b-ca3d-5cf8-bb36-e3365dfcb260)

5 The Turkey Buzzard’s Secret (#litres_trial_promo)

6 An Afternoon in the Rothschilds’ Chestnut Tree Paris, 1901 (#litres_trial_promo)

7 “It Is the Poor Who Will Suffer!” The Eiffel Tower, 1901 (#litres_trial_promo)

8 “Making Armies a Jest” (#litres_trial_promo)

9 An Unwelcome Dip in the Mediterranean Bay of Monaco, 1902 (#litres_trial_promo)

10 “Airship Is Useless, Says Lord Kelvin” London and New York, 1902 (#litres_trial_promo)

11 The World’s First Aerial Car Paris, 1903 (#litres_trial_promo)

12 A Scurrilous Stabbing and a Russian Bribe St. Louis, 1904 (#litres_trial_promo)

13 “Aeroplane Raised by Small Motor, M. Santos-Dumont Performs a Feat Never Before Attained in Europe” Paris, 1906 (#litres_trial_promo)

14 “A War of Engineers and Chemists” (#litres_trial_promo)

15 “Cavalry of the Clouds” (#litres_trial_promo)

16 Departure Guarujá, 1932 (#litres_trial_promo)

Postmortem In Search of a Heart Campo dos Afonsos, 2000 (#litres_trial_promo)

What Santos-Dumont Wrote (#litres_trial_promo)

What Santos-Dumont Read (#litres_trial_promo)

What Santos-Dumont Made (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Origins and Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)