What I Saw
My calculations had been accurate: I left with more than a sack of ballast.
This tiny "Brazil" aroused great curiosity. It was so small that people said I traveled with it inside my suitcase!
In it and in others, I made, in several months, several trips, in which I was penetrating the intimacy of the secret of aerial maneuvers.
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One day I bought an petroleum powered tricycle. I took it to the "Bois de Boulogne" and, using three ropes, hung it on a horizontal branch of a large tree, suspending it a few centimeters off the ground. It is difficult to explain my contentment when I noticed that, contrary to what happened on land, the motor of my suspended tricycle vibrated so pleasantly that it almost seemed to stop.
That day began my life as an inventor.
I ran to the house, started the calculations and drawings of my balloon no. 1.
At the Automobile Club meetings — since the Aero Club did not exist yet — I told my friends that I intended to go up in the air carrying an explosion engine under a spindle-shaped balloon. Everyone was astonished: they called my
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