My Airships - The Story of My Life

My Airships - The Story of My Life was written by Alberto Santos-Dumont and first published in 1904.

Take a look inside the book:

'Two young Brazilian boys strolled in the shade... were ignorant of machines to the extent that they had never seen a waggon or a wheelbarrow.

...Yet they were thoughtful boys. At this moment they discussed things beyond all that they had seen or heard...

"Attach two horses to the waggon."
"I mean a machine," said Luis.
"A mechanical horse with powerful iron legs!" suggested Pedro.
"No; I would have a motor waggon. If I could find an artificial force I would cause it to act on a point in the circumference of each wheel. Then the waggon could carry its own puller!"
"You might as well attempt to lift yourself from the ground by pulling at your boot straps!" laughed Pedro...
"I hold to applying the force to the wheels," insisted Luis.
"By the nature of things you would lose power," said Pedro. "A wheel is harder to force on from a point inside its circumference than when the motive power is applied to that circumference directly, as by pushing or pulling the waggon."
"To relieve friction I would run my power waggon on smooth iron rails, then the loss in power would be gained in speed."
"Smooth iron rails!" laughed Pedro. "Why, the wheels would slip on them. You would have to put notches all round their circumference and corresponding notches in the rails. And what would there be to prevent the power waggon slipping off the rails even then?"
The boys had been walking briskly. Now a shrieking noise startled them. Before them stretched in long lines a railway in course of construction, and from among the hills came toward them, at what seemed immense speed, a construction train.
"It is an avalanche!" cried Pedro.
"It is the very thing that I was dreaming of!" said Luis.
The train stopped. A gang of labourers emerged from it and began working on the road-bed...while the locomotive engineer answered the boys' questions and explained the mechanism of his engine. The boys discussed this later...
"Could it be adapted to the river men might become lords of the water as of the land," said Luis. "It would be only necessary to devise wheels capable of taking hold of the water. Fix them to a great frame like that waggon body and the steam-engine could propel it along the surface of the river!"
"Now you talk folly," exclaimed Pedro. "Does a fish float on the surface? In the water we must travel as the fish does—in it, not over it! ...
"What would you suggest?"
"I would suggest that you...study the fish!... There are fish that use propeller fins and flippers too. So you might devise But do not talk about waggon wheels in the water!"
They were now beside the broad river. The first steamer to navigate it was seen approaching from the distance...
"It is evidently a whale," said Pedro. "What navigates the water? Fish...that sometimes is seen swimming with its body half way above the surface? The whale. See, it is spouting water!"
"That is not water, but steam or smoke," said Luis.
"Then it is a dead whale, ...That is why it stays so high in the water—a dead whale...
"No" said Luis; "it is really a steam water waggon."
"With smoke coming from fire in it, as from the locomotive?"
"Yes."
"But the fire would burn it up...."
"The body is doubtless iron, like the locomotive."...
The steam-boat came to shore, close to the boys. Running to it, to their joy, they perceived on its deck an old friend of their family, a neighbouring planter.
"Come, boys!" he said, "and I will show you round this steam-boat."
After a long inspection of the machinery the two boys sat with their old friend on the foredeck in the shade of an awning.
"Pedro," said Luis, "will not men some day invent a ship to sail in the sky?"
The common-sense old planter glanced with apprehension at the youth's face, flushed with ardour.
"Have you been much in the sun, Luis?" he asked.'

The boy Luis is the young Alberto