Gob wrote:Brazil´s Alberto Santos Dumont flew the first self powered aeroplane.To this day, Brazil has a grudge with the US for the claim that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Granted, they flew first, but their airplane was catapulted, basically, so in practical terms it was more like a hanglider. Brazil´s Alberto Santos Dumont was the first to fly an airplane that was propelled by its own engine, which is much more like the airplane as we know it now. Of course things aren´t, as history class makes us think, just suddenly invented by a solitary genius in a single masterstroke, but the result of years of different people developing ideas and adding elements till you get to the more finalized basic version. But Dumont deserves at least as much credit as the Wright Brothers.
It would seem that the Wright Bros. had a three year jump on the Brazilian. (pun intended)Santos-Dumont, Alberto
Santos-Dumont, Alberto (älber'too sän'toozh-dümôN') [key], 1873–1932, Brazilian aeronaut. The son of a wealthy coffee grower, he was a flamboyant bon vivant and lived in France from 1891 to 1928. A pioneer in the development of aircraft, he was the first person to construct and fly (1898) a gasoline-powered airship, the predecessor of the modern blimp. He built several other lighter-than-air craft, winning in one a prize for a round-trip flight between Saint-Cloud and the Eiffel Tower (1901). At Neuilly, France, he established in 1903 the first airship base. In 1905 he turned to the construction of airplanes, and in the first successful public demonstration of one he flew a biplane some 200 ft (60 m) in Paris in 1906. His other achievements include building a successful small monoplane in 1909.
See his autobiography (tr. 1973); study by P. Hoffman (2003).
Read more: Alberto Santos-Dumont — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0 ... z1eO39XFYv
and...
blimp=/=airplane
