1
/
of
1
history-bytes
Dirigible Balloon of Alberto Santos Dumont
Dirigible Balloon of Alberto Santos Dumont
Regular price
$5.99 USD
Regular price
Sale price
$5.99 USD
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Quantity
Couldn't load pickup availability
Nook version of vintage monologue originally published in 1901. Lots of great info and illustrations seldom seen in the last 110 years. Based on an interview with Santos-Dumont giving lots of detail on his various balloons.
Read excerpt -
"I ordered my first dirigible balloon from Lachambre in the summer of 1898,"M. Santos-Dumont said. "It was in the form of a cylinder terminated at each end by a cone; it was eighty-two feet long and almost six feet in diameter, with a capacity of sixty-four hundred cubic feet of gas, which gave it a lifting-power of four hundred and fifty pounds. Being of varnished Japanese silk, it weighed only sixty-six pounds. This left me some three hundred and eighty pounds for basket, motor and other machinery, ballast, and my own weight.
"There was a time when any piece of silk of seemingly good quality was accepted in balloon-construction, without subjecting it to preliminary tension; to-day each piece is experimented with, and if its dynamometric resistance does not attain the number of kilograms necessary to offset the maximum force of gas dilatation, it is pitilessly rejected. It is the same for all ropes and cords; they are tried with the dynamometer up to the greatest strain that may ever come to be put on them."
This minute painstaking in the construction of his air-ships has served M. Santos-Dumont to good purpose more than once—most of all in the accident of August 6, 1901, when nothing but a long and slender "keel" of thin pine scantlings and piano-wire, resting its extremities on the roofs of two houses, interposed between him and a fall of eight flights to the ground.
"While the balloon envelop was being minutely pieced together," continued M. Santos-Dumont, "I succeeded in getting the rest of the air-ship completed. Hanging be¬neath the cigar-shaped balloon, it consisted simply of a light basket containing motor, propeller, ballast, and myself. The motor was one of the De Dion-Bouton tricycles, of an early type, with one cylinder, and giving about one and a half horse-power. You know how they work? Reduced to their greatest simplicity, you may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle. Air passing through it comes out mixed with gasoline gas, ready to explode. You give a whirl to a crank, and the thing begins working automatically. The piston goes down, sucking combined gas and air into the cylinder. Then the piston comes back and compresses it. Then it goes down again, striking an electric spark. There is an immediate explosion; and the piston goes up again, discharging the used-up gas. Thus there was one explosion for every two turns of the piston. In order to get the most power out of the least weight, I joined two of these cylinders end to end, and realized a three and a half horse-power motor."
Read excerpt -
"I ordered my first dirigible balloon from Lachambre in the summer of 1898,"M. Santos-Dumont said. "It was in the form of a cylinder terminated at each end by a cone; it was eighty-two feet long and almost six feet in diameter, with a capacity of sixty-four hundred cubic feet of gas, which gave it a lifting-power of four hundred and fifty pounds. Being of varnished Japanese silk, it weighed only sixty-six pounds. This left me some three hundred and eighty pounds for basket, motor and other machinery, ballast, and my own weight.
"There was a time when any piece of silk of seemingly good quality was accepted in balloon-construction, without subjecting it to preliminary tension; to-day each piece is experimented with, and if its dynamometric resistance does not attain the number of kilograms necessary to offset the maximum force of gas dilatation, it is pitilessly rejected. It is the same for all ropes and cords; they are tried with the dynamometer up to the greatest strain that may ever come to be put on them."
This minute painstaking in the construction of his air-ships has served M. Santos-Dumont to good purpose more than once—most of all in the accident of August 6, 1901, when nothing but a long and slender "keel" of thin pine scantlings and piano-wire, resting its extremities on the roofs of two houses, interposed between him and a fall of eight flights to the ground.
"While the balloon envelop was being minutely pieced together," continued M. Santos-Dumont, "I succeeded in getting the rest of the air-ship completed. Hanging be¬neath the cigar-shaped balloon, it consisted simply of a light basket containing motor, propeller, ballast, and myself. The motor was one of the De Dion-Bouton tricycles, of an early type, with one cylinder, and giving about one and a half horse-power. You know how they work? Reduced to their greatest simplicity, you may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle. Air passing through it comes out mixed with gasoline gas, ready to explode. You give a whirl to a crank, and the thing begins working automatically. The piston goes down, sucking combined gas and air into the cylinder. Then the piston comes back and compresses it. Then it goes down again, striking an electric spark. There is an immediate explosion; and the piston goes up again, discharging the used-up gas. Thus there was one explosion for every two turns of the piston. In order to get the most power out of the least weight, I joined two of these cylinders end to end, and realized a three and a half horse-power motor."
Share
