Aërial Navigation: A Popular Treatise on the Growth of Air Craft and on Aëronautical MeteorologyZahm, Albert Francis
History
Aërial Navigation: A Popular Treatise on the Growth of Air Craft and on Aëronautical Meteorology
Zahm, Albert Francis
Aeronautics; Meteorology
His unmercenary disposal of the two rich awards which he had won seemed
no less commendable than the dauntless industry which achieved such
rapid success. The Deutsch prize amounting in all to one hundred and
twenty-five thousand francs he divided into two unequal parts. The
greater sum of seventy-five thousand francs he gave to the prefect
of police of Paris, to be used for the deserving poor; the remainder
he distributed among his employés. The Encouragement Prize of four
thousand francs a year, mentioned before, he also declined to retain,
but instead he founded with the money a new prize at the disposal of
the Aëro Club. As a second reward for his triumphal voyage around the
Eiffel Tower, he received from the Brazilian government one hundred
and twenty-five thousand francs and a beautiful gold medal bearing
appropriate and very complimentary inscriptions.
Now that the stimulus and excitement of striving for the Deutsch prize
was over, the ardent inventor was free to develop and test his air
ships in a deliberate and scientific manner. He therefore set about
building specialized types of motor balloons, and practicing with them
over all kinds of territory, smooth and rough. Within the next six
years he constructed eight more air ships making altogether fourteen,
besides his various free balloons, to say nothing of the aëroplanes and
hydroplanes which he found time to develop. But before indulging in
these new luxuries he would have more experience with his _No. 6_.
When the cold weather set in, following his victorious flight about
the Eiffel Tower, Santos-Dumont went with his _No. 6_ to Monaco, to
practice air cruising over the Mediterranean. The Prince of Monaco
had erected for him an “aërodrome,” or balloon shed, facing the sea
and very near shore. On pleasant days the daring pilot would cruise
up and down the bay, not far from shore, trailing his guide-rope over
the waves with the greatest ease, and to the applause of thousands of
spectators. But on February 14, 1902, he set forth on a pleasure cruise
over the bay with insufficient gas pressure, and thus came to grief.
The bag grew flabby; the hydrogen poured to its higher end; the vessel
reared up so steeply that the propeller had to be stopped to avoid
its cutting the envelope. Rather than drift at the mercy of the wind,
the pilot opened the valve and sank slowly to the water where he was
rescued by a boat. On the following day the parts of his _No. 6_ were
fished out of the sea and sent back to Paris. His few days’ practice
had taught him the delights of guide-roping over the waters, and his
accident induced him in future to sew unvarnished silk partitions
across his balloons, to prevent the hydrogen passing too suddenly from
one end to the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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