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Open Source Philosophy and the Dawn of Aviation Figure 5. A milestone for aeronautical engineering: Dumont’s airships around the Eiffel Tower. Left — number 5 suffered from ‘gas leakage after turning the Eiffel Tower. This picture is ‘erroneously misinterpreted by many historians — they refer that the airship in the picture is the number 6. Right the number 6 in the path to win the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize.

Santos-Dumont envisioned a future in which air transportation would have an important role. Number 16 Omnibus, Dumont’s largest design, was conceived with passenger transportation in mind (Lins de Barros, 2003). Although number 10 was unsuccessful, Dumont’s dream came true as early as 1910 with regular airship flights by German DELAG, the first airline in the world. Later on, the Zeppelin Company became famous for using airships to carry passengers overseas.

On July 2, 1900, LZ 1, the first Zeppelin airship, performed its maiden flight over Constance Lake, Germany. It was only 18 minutes in the air and carried five passengers. The cloth-covered dirigible, which was the prototype of many subsequent models, had 1 aluminum structure, 17 hydrogen containers for lifting gas storage, and 2 15-hp Daimler internal combustion engines, each tuning two propellers. After two further flights, which took place on October 17, and 21, 1900, it was scrapped. In 1905, Zeppelin built his second airship, the LZ 2, which incorporated three major improvements: lighter and more powerfull engines, more accurate commands, and stronger structure, However, by the second test flight in 1906, one of the engines malfunctioned and the airship proceeded to an emergency landing. Afterwards, a thunderstorm caught the aircraft and destroyed it. After the Zeppelin LZ 4 airship was also destroyed by a thunderstorm in 1908, the Germans collected money to enable Graf von Zeppelin to continue building airships. Zeppelins were employed during World War I in raids to bomb London and Italian cities.

Santos-Dumont meets Thomas Edison

After his flights around the Eiffel Tower, Santos-Dumont became worldwide famous. He was cartooned, biographies about him were written, postcards featured him, suits and shoes were sold remembering his way of dressing, and even Carnival costumes in Brazil imitated his airships (Jorge, 1977). Santos-Dumont eccentricities and adventurous life have also inspired lots and lots of adventurers and writers. Right after his trip to the United States in 1902 and his return to Paris, great number of toys and publications appeared. Probably, Tom Swift was the most expressive character ever created based on Santos-Dumont real life (Pagano, 2012). Most of the inventions in the Tom Swift series are enhancements of the real inventor’s creation, the combined airplane-airship was perfectly inspired in Santos-Dumont number 14 (Fig. 6).



Santos-Dumont received a greeting card from Thomas Edison with congratulations for his achievements with airships (Pagano, 2012). The aviation pioneer was touched by Edison’s card, therefore both inventors met during Dumont’s trip to the United States, in 1902.

One of the purposes of their conversation was the aeronautical use of batteries that had been developed by Edison (New York Times, 1902). This encounter was published by some newspaper at that time (Pagano, 2012). Emmanuel Aimé, ex-secretary of the Aéro-Club de France, took part in the meeting.

In the beginning of the meeting, Edison declared that mankind ought to be ashamed of themselves because the problem of aerial navigation by human beings had not been solved. He also made clear that while Santos-Dumont performed a great job in steering airships through the air, it would take a long time before Aviation was due to become commercially possible. The reasons were due to the fact that no inventor was able to secure any reward for his labor under the patent laws at that time. He called for a sort of protective institute of invention, which should have rewarded the J. Aerosp. Technol. Manag., São José dos Campos, Vol.4, No 3, pp. 355-379, Jul.-Sep., 2012 363