| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Bob Dog" |
| Date: |
24 Dec 2003 09:36:43 PM |
| Object: |
[OT] News: "Was the airplane's inventor Brazilian?" |
I saw a similar news item on TV this past week. I don't post
this as USA bashing (for a change) but because it poses an
interesting question of what constitutes the first true flight
of an airplane. Alberto Santos-Dumont probably wasn't the first
to do it, but he must surely be the first to make it useful.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/10/brazil.santosdumont.reut/
Bob Dog
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Was the airplane's inventor Brazilian?
PETROPOLIS, Brazil (Reuters) -- As Americans prepare to celebrate
the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight, a whole
country is cringing at what it believes to be a historical
injustice against one of its most beloved heroes.
Ask anyone in Brazil who invented the airplane and they will say
Alberto Santos-Dumont, a five-foot four-inch (1.6 meter) bon
vivant who was as well known for his aerial prowess as he was for
his dandyish dress and high society life in Belle Epoque Paris.
As Paul Hoffman recounts in his Santos-Dumont biography "Wings of
Madness," the eccentric Brazilian was the first and only person
to own a personal flying machine that could take him just about
anywhere he wanted to go.
"He would keep his dirigible tied to a gas lamp post in front of
his Paris apartment at the Champs-Elysees and every night he
would fly to Maxim's for dinner. During the day he'd fly to go
shopping, he'd fly to visit friends," Hoffman said.
An idealist who believed flight was spiritually soothing, Santos-
Dumont financed his lavish lifestyle and aerial experiments in
Paris with the inheritance his coffee-farming father had advanced
him as a young man. Always impeccably dressed, he regularly took
a gourmet lunch with him on his ballooning expeditions.
It was on November 12, 1906, when Santos-Dumont flew a kite-like
contraption with boxy wings called the 14-Bis some 722 feet (220
meters) on the outskirts of Paris. It being the first public
flight in the world, he was hailed as the inventor of the
airplane all over Europe.
It was only later that the secretive Orville and Wilbur Wright
proved they had beaten Santos-Dumont at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, three years earlier on December 17.
But to bring up the Wright brothers with a Brazilian is bound to
elicit an avalanche of arguments -- some more reasonable than
others -- as to why their compatriot's flight didn't count.
"It's one of the biggest frauds in history," scoffs Wagner Diogo,
a taxi driver in Rio de Janeiro, of the Wrights' inaugural flight.
"No one saw it, and they used a catapult to launch" the airplane.
Did it count?
Apparently, the debate comes down to how you define the first
flight of an airplane.
Henrique Lins de Barros, a Brazilian physicist and Santos-Dumont
expert, argues that the Wright brothers' flight did not fulfill
the conditions that had been set up at the time to distinguish a
true flight from a prolonged hop.
But Santos-Dumont's flight did meet the criteria, which in essence
meant he took off unassisted, publicly flew a predetermined length
in front of experts and then landed safely.
"If we understand what the criteria were at the end of the 19th
century, the Wright brothers simply do not fill any of the
prerequisites," says Lins de Barros.
Brazilians also claim that the Wrights launched their Flyer in
1903 with a catapult or at an incline, thereby disqualifying it
from being a true airplane because it did not take off on its own.
Even Santos-Dumont experts like Lins de Barros concede this is
wrong. But he says that the strong, steady winds at Kitty Hawk
were crucial for the Flyer's take-off, disqualifying the flight
because there was no proof it could lift off on its own.
Peter Jakab, chairman of the aeronautics division at the National
Air and Space Museum in Washington and a Wright brothers expert,
says such claims are preposterous.
By the time Santos-Dumont got around to his maiden flight the
Wright brothers had already flown numerous times, including one
in which they flew 24 miles (39 km) in 40 minutes.
"Even in 1903 the airplane sustained itself in the air for nearly
a minute. If it's not sustaining itself under its own power it's
not going to stay up that long," Jakab says.
Even in France -- never a country too eager to agree with the U.S.
point of view -- the Wrights are considered to have flown before
Santos-Dumont, says Claude Carlier, the director of the French
Center for the History of Aeronautics and Space.
"There's a strong nationalist issue at play here," says Marcos
Villares, Santos-Dumont's great grandnephew. "Flight was a very
important step in human history, in the history of technology.
Every country wants to claim priority."
First to use a watch?
But that is not to say that Santos-Dumont does not deserve
recognition for his other contributions.
By rounding the Eiffel Tower in a motorized dirigible in 1901, he
helped prove that air travel could be controlled and a practical
means of transportation.
"Just to show that the flying machine was practical is an
incredible achievement," says Hoffman, his biographer.
At his summer home in the Brazilian mountain town of Petropolis,
tour guides perpetuate myths about Santos-Dumont -- such as how
he invented the wristwatch.
Santos-Dumont experts deny that assertion, although they concede
he was probably the first male civilian to use a watch after
asking his friend Louis Cartier to make him a timepiece he could
use while flying. Previously, only royalty and soldiers had used
watches.
To this day, you can still buy the Santos-model Cartier watch for
only a couple of thousand dollars.
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| User: "John Iser" |
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| Title: Re: [OT] News: "Was the airplane's inventor Brazilian?" |
27 Dec 2003 07:38:41 AM |
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(Bob Dog) wrote in message
<4fa573de.0312241936.6f4c33a4@posting.google.com>:
I saw a similar news item on TV this past week. I don't post
this as USA bashing (for a change) but because it poses an
interesting question of what constitutes the first true flight
of an airplane. Alberto Santos-Dumont probably wasn't the first
to do it, but he must surely be the first to make it useful.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/10/brazil.santosdumont.reut/
The first powered flight was by a New Zealander!
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html
Musta scared the crap out of the sheep...
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| User: "Kilmir" |
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| Title: Re: [OT] News: "Was the airplane's inventor Brazilian?" |
29 Dec 2003 07:29:33 AM |
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"John Iser" <right.back@cha.com> wrote in message
news:jbtquv0fs5cqp2uscin2ji8h45tgpqufjl@4ax.com...
bg12345@apexmail.com (Bob Dog) wrote in message
<4fa573de.0312241936.6f4c33a4@posting.google.com>:
I saw a similar news item on TV this past week. I don't post
this as USA bashing (for a change) but because it poses an
interesting question of what constitutes the first true flight
of an airplane. Alberto Santos-Dumont probably wasn't the first
to do it, but he must surely be the first to make it useful.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/10/brazil.santosdumont.reut/
The first powered flight was by a New Zealander!
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html
Musta scared the crap out of the sheep...
Hmm saw on discovery channel that a german did the first powered flight.
Only saw the end and missed the name. Will try to look it up.
In any case, the Wright brothers simply were the first to show it on a
flight show. Probably because other inventors didn't live in the US and
didn't have flight shows in the neighbourhood to show their progression.
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