By Kyle Hedlund
If you ever want to start a fight with a Brazilian, mention the Wright brothers‘ pioneering aeronautical exploits of 1903. Everybody knows Orville and Wilbur invented the airplane, right? Perhaps not. The guy who gave his name to the airport in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Alberto Santos Dumont, is thought by most people in this country to be the legitimate owner of the "first to fly" moniker. The reason the rest of the world doesn‘t know about it is the American propaganda machine. You conspiracy theorists out there might want to get out a pen and take some notes...
So who was Santos Dumont? He was a wealthy Brazilian inventor with a passion for flying. He worked mostly with lighter-than-air machines (balloons and blimps) before pursuing the much more challenging heavier-than-air, self-propelled planes that we take for granted nowadays. In October of 1906 in France, he got a contraption to propel itself off the ground, landing about 60 meters from where he began. On November 12 of that same year, he won a prize for setting the first aviation record in the world, flying more than 200 meters with witnesses from the Aero-Club of France in attendance. This was credited at the time (and some would say still) with being the first mechanical flight in the world.
But I know what you brainwashed Americans in the audience are thinking: Orville and Wilbur Wright flew three entire years earlier in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Well here‘s where the controversy comes to a head. According to the pro-Santos Dumont camp, the secrecy of the Wrights makes it impossible to prove their claims, and there is circumstantial evidence working against them. There are no records other than eyewitness accounts for their exploits, and back in the 1950‘s the New York Times produced an eyewitness who says the Wrights merely glided after getting off the ground courtesy of a hill and a big ramp. Hmm. The brothers were so secretive, allegedly due to concerns about patents, that they didn‘t even film their inventions in action until 1908. Apparently they didn‘t want anybody copying their design. Santos Dumont and his supporters openly wondered at the time why the Wrights did not try for the 500,000 French franc prize at the 1904 St.Louis world‘s fair if they were, in fact, able to get airborne. After all, St.Louis is not far from their home base of Dayton, Ohio, where they were conducting many of their tests. If you think the brothers were not after the money, then why did they actively pursue similar prizes in the ensuing years? In 1907 the Wrights did not try to compete for the Scientific American trophy and prize money because they were unable to get their plane off the ground under its own means. In 2002, a North American named Ken Hyde, who is an expert builder of replicas of the first Wright Flyer, in an interview with the News Observer of North Carolina, stated that "we know how to put a man on the moon, but we have not been successful in flying a true Wright airplane" (C. Clabby, Dec.15, 2002).
This all sounds pretty convincing, doesn‘t it? Unfortunately, this is one argument that will likely never be won (fisticuffs aside). Wright supporters have rebuttals for every Santos Dumont argument, and they have the upper hand in the history books. At least outside Brazil.
One final note about Brazil‘s (or the world‘s) first aviator, upon seeing airplanes used in World War I, Santos Dumont committed suicide, distraught over the direction his ideas were taken.
To read more about the controversy, check out the sources from which I gleaned much of my information. The first is from a Brazilian in the pro Santos Dumont camp, the second is from the Wright Brothers Airplane Company web-site, and the third seems relatively neutral.
http://www.first-to-fly.com/History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont
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