The Prize Patrol
 

  BACK    Home    History Wing    Adventure Wing    Exhibits & Programs    Company Store    Information Desk    NEXT 

    Available in Française, Español, Português, Deutsch, Россию, 中文, 日本, and others.



Entrance 

History Wing 

The Wright Story 

Showing the    
World 

  Up       

Politics and    
Patents
 

  The Prize    
Patrol
  
(You are here.)       

  Stalled in    
Europe
 

Bell's Boys 

A Turn for    
the Purse
 

Back in the Air 

The June Bug 

He Flies! 

Tragedy at    
Fort Meyer
 

Pushing the    
Envelope
 

A Whirlwind Tour 

Them's Our Boys 

The Military FlYer 

Crossing the    
Channel
 

The Patent Wars 

Rheims 

'Round the Lady 

Wright Timeline 

            

Need to    

find your    

 bearings?    

Try these    
navigation aids:    

 Site Map 

Museum Index 

Search    
the Museum
 

 If this is your first      
visit, please stop by:    

About    
the Museum
 

Something to share?     
 Please:     

Contact Us 

            

 

n 1906, the anti-Wright skeptics in the European aviation community had converted the press. European newspapers, especially in France, were openly derisive, calling them bluffeurs (bluffers). The Paris edition of the New York Herald summed up Europe's opinion of the Wright brothers in an editorial on February 10, 1906: "The Wright have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. It's easy to say, 'We have flown.'"

And the French had some reason to be cocky. The French aeronautical revival, inspired by Octave Chanute's address to the Aero-Club de France in early 1903, was beginning to bear fruit. At the urging of Ernest Archdeacon and Ferdinand Ferber, French aviators had experimented with gliders derived from Wright designs. Their success was limited — none of them repeated the careful research in lift and drag that had enabled the Wrights to build their record-breaking 1902 glider. More importantly, they misunderstood the function and necessity of the Wright's control system and discarded it. Instead, the French endeavored to build an inherently stable flying machine that would need little control input, and they were satisfied with their own results.

When he first heard of the Wrights' experiments, Ferber had been building gliders since 1899 without much success. In June 1902, he built a crude copy of the Wright's 1901 glider as described to him by Octave Chanute and flew it. Encouraged by its performance, he built a slightly larger version, mounted a 6 hp engine and two coaxial propellers and tried unsuccessfully to fly the aircraft in December 1902 while suspended from a crane. The dogged Ferber went back to unpowered gliders and in 1904 built an aircraft with Wright-type biplane wings with an elevator in front and a horizontal stabilizer in back. This would become a standard European design.

In 1904, Ernest Archdeacon contracted the military balloon factory at Meudon to build his own copy of the 1902 Wright glider – by this time, the design had come to be known as an aeroplane de type Wright. He also recruited a young architectural student, Gabriel Voison, to serve as pilot. Ferber, who at this time had more gliding experience than any other living European,  also assisted. After testing the glider for several weeks, Voison was making flights up to 65 feet in length, and Archdeacon gleefully announced to the Aero-Club de France that Voison had mastered skill of piloting an aircraft. It mattered little that the Wrights had made flights almost ten times as long in their 1902 glider. Archdeacon was confident that the French could now design a glider that would "do as well as the Wright brothers."

To spur the progress of aviation in Europe – especially France – well-heeled enthusiasts offered rich prizes. Archdeacon himself put up the Coupe d'Aviation Ernest Archdeacon, a silver trophy that would go to the first person to fly a powered airplane 25 meters (80 feet). The Aero-Club de France offered a prize of 1500 francs to the first person to fly 100 meters, or 330 feet. And Archdeacon collaborated with Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe to establish the Grand Prix d'Aviation, a prize of 50,000 francs to the first person to fly a kilometer in a circular course.

Europe got to work. In 1905, Voison collaborated with both Archdeacon and Louis Bleriot – a manufacturer of automotive components – building and flying gliders with "cellular" wings and box-kite tails, similar to kites tested a decade earlier by Lawrence Hargrave. These too would become standard elements of European aircraft design. Samuel F. Cody, an American cowboy is Great Britain, flew a kite-glider with ailerons.  Rumanian Trajan Vuia made a series of short hops in a monoplane powered by a carbonic acid gas motor. In Denmark, J. C. R. Ellehammer made a 42-meter circular flight in an odd biplane while tethered to a post. Leon Levavasseur perfected two light airplane engines of 24 and 50 horsepower he named "Antoinette" motors after the daughter of his partner, Jules Gastambide. These engines would become the mainstay of European aviation during its earliest years.

But the aviator that captured Europe's attention was Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian-born immigrant to France and the son of a wealthy coffee-plantation owner. Santos was a talented engineer who began racing motorized tricycles, then turned to lighter-than-air flight. He puttered about in odd-shaped dirigibles of his own design over the rooftops of Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, often crashing slowly and safely into trees and chimneys. In 1904, he visited the St. Louis Exposition in the United States, where he saw demonstrations of Octave Chanute's gliders and heard about the work of the Wright brothers. Inspired, he turned his talents to powered aircraft.

In July of 1906, Santos-Dumont suspended an odd-looking airplane beneath his dirigible Airship No. 14 for flight testing. Called the 14-bis ("14 encore"), this aircraft was a de type Wright, but the wings met at a sharp upwards angle or "dihedral" to give it stability. At the front was a pivoting box-kite assembly that acted as both an elevator and a rudder. A 24-horsepower Antoinette engine turned a single propeller that stuck out from behind. The pilot stood upright in a wicker basket, much like a balloon pilot.

On September 13, 1906, Santos coaxed his ungainly aircraft off the ground for a brief hop of 7 meters (23 feet) and made a hard landing. After making repairs and refitting the craft with a 50-horsepower Antoinette, Santos tried again. On October 23, he flew the 14-bis 60 meters (198 feet), winning the Archdeacon prize. He modified the craft once again, adding ailerons and eliminating the rudder function of the front control surfaces. On November 12, he flew 220 meters (726 feet), capturing the 1500 franc prize from the Aero-Club for the first 100-meter flight. It hardly mattered that the craft cumbersome and uncontrollable, or that Santos abandoned the design a few months later, never to use it again. He had flown – in public – and the French were beside themselves with aeronautical optimism and national pride.
 


Ernest Archdeacon was a wealthy lawyer and balloonist.

Ferber's 1902 interpretation of the 1901 Wright Glider was crude, but he did repeat one of their essential experiments -- he flew it as a kite to get some idea of the lift it would produce.

In 1904, Ferber designed and flew a glider with an elevator in front and a fixed horizontal stabilizer in back. The two triangular surfaces at the wingtips are movable rudders.

Archdeacon lying down in his 1904 interpretation of the 1902 Wright Glider, soon to be piloted by Gabriel Voison (standing). Note that there seems to be no method of warping the wings or turning the rudder.

The Coupe d'Aviation Ernest Archdeacon.

The 1905 Voison-Archdeacon glider of  was mounted on pontoons and launched by towing it behind a motorboat. It made a short, uncontrolled flight on 8 June 1905. Louis Bleriot shot film footage of this flight attempt which still exists today. See it here.

Samuel Cody had developed man-lifting kites for the British military to use as aerial observation posts. These kites could reach altitudes of 2000 feet (610 meters).

On 18 March 1906, Trajan Vuia made a short hop-flight of about 40 feet (12 meters) before his engine quit. While not successful, the tractor configuration (propeller first) design foreshadowed things to come.

Levavasseur's "Antojnette" engine – he patented the "V-8" configuration.

Alberto Santos-Dumont in the cockpit of the 14-bis.

Ferdinand Ferber in his "Chariot Automobile" designed to test propeller thrust. Ferber was a captain in an artillery battery in the French Army.

Ferber flying his copy of the 1901 Wright glider.

In December of 1902, Ferber attempted to fly a motorized copy of the Wright's 1901 glider in circles while attached to a rotating crane. The results were entertaining, but unsuccessful.

Voison flying Archdeacon's glider at Berck Beach, Pas-de-Calais, France, on 3 April, 1904.


Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe was a philanthropist and supporter of early aviation. He had made his fortune in petroleum and was known as the "Oil King of Europe."


In the summer of 1905, Voison and Bleriot formed the first airplane manufacturing company and built this glider along the lines of the Voison-Archdeacon glider. A launch attempt on 18 July 1905 ended in disaster with Voison almost drowning.

The 1905 Cody glider was launched and flown as a kite to reach altitude, then the lines were dropped and it glided to the ground.

In August and September of 1906 Jacob Ellehammer made several tethered hop-flights in this "semi-biplane.". Like Vuia's airplane, it too had a tractor configuration.

Santos Dumont in his No. 6 dirigible rounds the Eiffel Tower on his way to winning the Deutsch Prize in 1901.

Santos-Dumont flew his 14-bis suspended from a dirigible in August 1906.


The prize-winning flight of the 14-bis on October 23, 1906.


Back to the top

  BACK    Home    History Wing    Adventure Wing    Exhibits & Programs    Company Store    Information Desk    NEXT 

"Aviation is proof that – given the will – we can do the impossible."
 Eddie Rickenbacker

 

 

The Wright Story/Showing the World/Santos Dumont Flies in France

Part of a biography of the Wright Brothers

 

www.wright-brothers.org
Copyright © 1999-2011