Questão 32 (Português e Inglês) da 2ª fase do IME 2027

The polemics that have been dragging on for a century no longer exist for those who have informed themselves properly on the details of the history of the invention of flight. Santos-Dumont was in fact the first to fly by his own means, with autonomous takeoff and landing. On October 23, 1906, the 14- Bis covered 60 meters at a height of 3 meters, after running for some 100 meters on the Champs de Bagatelle, in Paris. On November 12, he flew for 220 meters, in the same place, and established the first record in aviation for speed: 41.3 kilometers an hour. The feat was ratified by the International Aeronautical Federation (FAI), created in 1905.

The brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, United States, were said to have flown on December 17, 1903. According to their own report, they covered 258 meters in 59 seconds, against strong winds on the beach at Kill Devil Hills, in Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina. The whole documentation on such an important fact was no more than a telegram and the presence of a few lifeguards who were looking for the wreckage of a ship. With the declared objective of keeping invention secret, to sell it to a military power, they only presented it publicly in 1908. The problem is that, to take off, the Flyer always depended on some external help, like a catapult to get it to run along rails and then to leave the ground, with the help of strong winds.

“Today, there is a modality of airplane that fits this very well, called motorglider, which does not take off on its own” says physicist Henrique Lins de Barros. Once in the air, it flies very well. “In 1908, the French planes would fly 10 km; the Wright had reached 124 km.”

The difference between the flights of Dumont and those of the Wrights is important for understanding the case. “In 1905, the aeroclubs of the entire world regulated the conditions that a flight would need to satisfy, to be validated” explains Rodrigo Moura Visoni, from UniRio, a student of the subject. According to these rules, the flight should be public and announced beforehand, and carried out in calm weather and on flat terrain. The height and time remaining in the air would not be considered as factors for declassification, but the takeoff had to be unassisted and the landing, accident-free. A qualified committee would accompany everything. “Only Dumont’s plane complied with all these rules and flew before hundreds of other people.”

The name arose when it was hitched to balloon No.14 in the preflight experiments. From 14 to 14- Bis was a hop. The Parisian press called it Oiseau de Proie (bird of prey). Dumont changed the 14-Bis until competing for and winning the Archdeacon award (3 thousand francs, for the unprecedented flight of the 60 meters) and the Aeroclub of France award (1.5 thousand francs, for the flight of 220 meters). He did not win the Deutsch-Archdeacon award (50 thousand francs, for flying a thousand meters in a closed circuit), won by Henri Farman. But he no longer had to. Santos-Dumont was in history.