My Airships/Chapter 16
A GLANCE BACKWARD AND FORWARD
JUST as I had not gone into air-ship constructing for the sake of winning the Deutsch prize, so now I had no reason to stop experimenting after I had won it. When I built and navigated my first air-ships neither Aéro Club nor Deutsch prize were yet in existence. The two, by their rapid rise and deserved prominence, had brought the problem of aerial navigation suddenly before the public—so suddenly, indeed, that I was really not prepared to enter into such a race with a time limit. Naturally anxious to have the honour of winning such a competition, I had been forced on rapidly in new constructions at both danger and expense. Now I would take time to perfect myself systematically as an aerial navigator.
Suppose you buy a new bicycle or automobile. You will have a perfect machine to your hand without having had any of the labour, the deceptions, the false starts and recommencements, of the inventor and constructor. Yet with all these advantages you will soon find that possession of the perfected machine does not necessarily mean that you shall go spinning over the highways with it. You may be so unpractised that you will fall off the bicycle or blow up the automobile. The machine is all right, but you must learn to run it.
To bring the modern bicycle to its perfection thousands of amateurs, inventors, engineers, and constructors laboured during more than twenty-five years, trying endless innovations, one by one rejecting the great mass of them, and, after endless failures by the way of half successes, slowly nearing to the perfect organism.
So it is to-day with the automobile. Imagine the united labours and financial sacrifices of the engineers and manufacturers that led, step by step, up to the road-racing automobiles of the Paris-Berlin competition in 1901—the year in which the only working dirigible balloon then in existence won the Deutsch prize against a time limit that was thought by many a complete bar to success. Yet of the 170 perfected automobiles registered for entry to the Paris-Berlin competition only 109 completed the first day's run, and of these only 26 finally reached Berlin.
RETURNING TO AËRO CLUB GROUNDS ABOVE AQUEDUCT
It is perfectly natural that this should be so. People think nothing of it. Such is the natural development of a great invention. But if I break down while in the air I cannot stop for repairs: I must go on, and the whole world knows it.
Looking back, therefore, on my progress since the time I doubled up above the Bagatelle grounds in 1898 I was surprised at the rapid pace at which I had allowed the notice of the world and my own ardour to push me on in what was in reality an arbitrary task. At the risk of my neck and the needless sacrifice of a great deal of money I had won the Deutsch prize. I might have arrived at the same point of progress by less forced and more reasonable stages. Throughout I had been inventor, patron, manufacturer, amateur, mechanician, and air-ship captain all united! Yet any one of these qualities is thought to bring sufficient work and credit to the individual in the world of automobiles.
With all these cares I often found myself criticised for choosing calm days for my experiments. Yet who, experimenting over Paris—as I had to do when trying for the Deutsch prize—would add to his natural risks and expenses the vexations of who knows what prosecution for knocking down the chimney-pots of a great capital on the heads of a population of pedestrians?
One by one I tried the assurance companies. None would make a rate for me against the damage I might do on a squally day. None would give me a rate on my own air-ship to insure it against destruction.
To me it was now clear that what I most needed was navigation practice pure and simple. I had been increasing the speed of my air-ships—that is to say, I had been constructing at the expense of my education as an air-ship captain.
The captain of a steamboat obtains his certificate only after years of study and experience of navigation in inferior capacities. Even the "chauffeur" on the public highway must pass his examination before the authorities will give him his papers.
In the air, where all is new, the routine navigation of a dirigible balloon, requiring for founda.png)
MEDAL AWARDED BY THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT
Urged on by these considerations, my great object in the autumn of 1901 was to find a favourable place for practice in aerial navigation.
My swiftest and best air-ship—"The Santos-Dumont No. 6 "—was in perfect condition. The day after winning the Deutsch prize in it my chief mechanician asked me if he should tighten it up with hydrogen. I told him yes. Then, seeking to let some more hydrogen into it, he discovered something curious. The balloon would not take any more! It had not lost a single cubic unit of hydrogen!
The actual winning of the Deutsch prize had cost only a few litres of petroleum!
Just as the Paris winter of biting winds, cold rains, and lowering skies was approaching I received an intimation that the Prince of Monaco, himself a man of science celebrated for his personal investigations, would be pleased to build a balloon house directly on the beach of La Condamine, from which I might dart out on the Mediterranean, and so continue my aerial practice through the winter.
The situation promised to be ideal. The little bay of Monaco, sheltered from behind against the wind and cold by mountains, and from the wind and sea on either side by the heights of Monte Carlo and Monaco town, would make a well-protected manœuvre ground.
The air-ship would be always ready, filled with hydrogen gas. It could slip out of the balloon house to profit by good weather, and back again for shelter at the approach of squalls. The balloon house would be erected on the edge of the shore, and the whole Mediterranean would lie before me for guide-roping. .png)
"No. 9" SHOWING CAPTAIN LEAVING BASKET FOR MOTOR