Santos-Dumont No. 1
The Santos-Dumont No. 1 was a lighter-than-air airship created by Alberto Santos-Dumont. It used a petroleum motor with propeller making 1200 turns per minute. Its balloon was 25m long and 3.5 meters in diameter, with 180 cubic meters of gas capacity.
Its first trial took place at the Jardin d'Acclimatation west of Paris, on 18 September 1898. The balloon could be filled with hydrogen onsite (at the price of 1 franc per cubic meter). It crashed into some nearby trees, an accident which Santos-Dumont blamed on "professional aeronauts" who insisted he start from the wrong side of the takeoff field — due to their inexperience with his type of vessel.
By 20 September the ship was repaired and took off from the inventor's preferred starting point. He started flying circles around his audience (including members of the Aero Club of France) and ascended to 400m: "an altitude that is considered nothing for a spherical balloon, but which is absurd and uselessly dangerous for an air-ship under trial".
He ran into problems with gas pressure during the descent
So long as I continued to ascend the hydrogen increased in volume as a consequence of the atmospheric depression. So by its tension the balloon was kept taut, and everything went well. It was not the same when I began descending. The air pump, which was intended to compensate the contraction of the hydrogen, was of insufficient capacity. The balloon, a long cylinder, all at once began to fold in the middle like a pocket knife, the tension of the cords became unequal, and the balloon envelope was on the point of being torn by them. At that moment I thought that all was over, the more so as the descent, which had begun, could no longer be checked by any of the usual means on board, where nothing worked.
The descent became a fall. Luckily, I was falling in the neighbourhood of the grassy turf of Bagatelle, where some big boys were flying kites. A sudden idea struck me. I cried to them to grasp the end of my guide rope, which had already touched the ground, and to run as fast as they could with it against the wind.
They were bright young fellows, and they grasped the idea and the rope at the same lucky instant. The effect of this help in extremis was immediate, and such as I had hoped. By the manœuvre we lessened the velocity of the fall, and so avoided what would have otherwise have been a bad shaking-up, to say the least.
I was saved for the first time. Thanking the brave boys, who continued aiding me to pack everything into the air-ship's basket, I finally secured a cab and took the relics back to Paris.[1]
According to Alphonse Berget in 1909, the Santos-Dumont No. 1 was the smallest dirigible ever constructed.[2]
Name | Santos-Dumont No. 1 |
---|---|
Year constructed | 1898 |
Creators | Alberto Santos-Dumont |
Volume (m3) | 180 |
Length (m) | 25 |
Diameter (m) | 3.5 |
Height (m) | |
Weight (kg) | |
Engine horsepower | |
Speed (km/h) | |
Keywords |
References
- ↑ Alberto Santos-Dumont, My Airships (1904), pp. 74–81.
- ↑ Berget, 1909, Conquest of the Air; p. 20. "The largest dirigible balloon yet constructed is the Zeppelin, of 12,000 cubic metres, while the smallest is the Santos Dumont, No. 1, which gauged by 180 cubic metres; it is true that its only passenger, M. Santos Dumont, weighed only 52 kilogrammes, and that the whole car weighed only 10 kilogrammes!"