Alberto Santos-Dumont: aviation pioneer

Abstract

The lifework of Santos-Dumont is an important mark in 20th Century, once it has accelerated the aeronautics’ development. In less than ten years, the Brazilian fl yer has got to solve two problems which affl icted the inventors: the balloons maneuverability, a challenge since the 18th Century, and the fl ight of the airplane, which had concentrated the efforts of important scientists and engineers. Santos-Dumont’s biography shows the trajectory of a useful and creative inventor who, giving his contributions to aeronautical progress, applied himself, worked perseveringly, to the popularization of the human fl ight. At the end of his life, depressed, committed suicide. His conquests transformed him into a national hero; despite very honored is relatively little known. In the centenary of the history’s fi rst homologated fl ight, the 14-bis fl ight, it’s opportune to bend over his history and to understand the ways of invention.