This first airship which really deserved the name marked an era in the development of this type of aircraft. In view of its complete success it is astonishing that nothing further was done in this line in France for fifteen years, when Santos-Dumont began his series of record-making flights. Within this period, however, the gasoline motor had been adapted to the needs of the automobile, and thus a new and light-weight engine, suitable in every respect, had been placed within the reach of aeronauts. In the meantime, a new idea had been brought to the stage of actual trial. In 1893, in St. Petersburg, David Schwartz built a rigid airship, the gas receptacle of which was sheet aluminum. It was braced by aluminum tubes, but while being inflated the interior work was so badly broken that it was abandoned. Schwartz made a second attempt in Berlin in 1897. The airship was safely inflated, and managed to hold its position against a wind blowing 17 miles an hour, but could not make headway against it. After the gas had been withdrawn, and before it could be put under shelter, a severe windstorm damaged it, and the mob of spectators speedily demolished it in the craze for souvenirs of the occasion. [Illustration: Wreck of the Schwartz aluminum airship, at Berlin, in 1897.] [Illustration: The type of the earlier Santos-Dumont dirigibles. This shape showed a tendency to “buckle,” or double up in the middle like a jackknife. To avoid this the later Santos-Dumonts were of much larger proportional diameter amidships.] In 1898, the young Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, came to Paris imbued with aeronautic zeal, and determined to build a dirigible balloon that would surpass the former achievements of Giffard and Renard, which he felt confident were but hints of what might be accomplished by that type of airship. He began the construction of the series of dirigible balloons which eventually numbered 12, each successive one being an improvement on the preceding. He made use of the air-bag suggested by Meusnier for the balloon of the Duke of Chartres in 1784, although in an original way, at first using a pneumatic pump to inflate it, and later a rotatory fan. Neither prevented the gas-bag from “buckling” and coming down with consequences more or less serious to the airship--but Santos-Dumont himself always escaped injury. His own record of his voyages in his book, _My Air-Ships_, gives a more detailed account of his contrivances and inventions than can be permitted here. If Santos-Dumont did not greatly surpass his predecessors, he is at least to be credited with an enthusiasm which aroused the interest of the whole world in the problems of aeronautics; and his later achievements in the building and flying of aeroplanes give him a unique place in the history of man’s conquest of the air. [Illustration: Type of the later Santos-Dumont’s dirigibles.]