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PAUL HOFFMAN
WINGS OF MADNESS
ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT
AND THE INVENTION
OF FLIGHT
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Paul Hoffman 2003
Paul Hoffman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
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SOURCE ISBN: 9781841153681
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007441082
Version: 2016-10-11
For Ann and Alexander and Matt
CONTENTS
Prologue Dinner on the Ceiling Champs-Elysées, 1903
2 “A Most Dangerous Place for a Boy” Paris, 1891
3 First Flight Vaugirard, 1897
4 Dying for Science Paris, 1899
6 An Afternoon in the Rothschilds’ Chestnut Tree Paris, 1901
7 “It Is the Poor Who Will Suffer!” The Eiffel Tower, 1901
9 An Unwelcome Dip in the Mediterranean Bay of Monaco, 1902
10 “Airship Is Useless, Says Lord Kelvin” London and New York, 1902
11 The World’s First Aerial Car Paris, 1903
12 A Scurrilous Stabbing and a Russian Bribe St. Louis, 1904
14 “A War of Engineers and Chemists”
Postmortem In Search of a Heart Campo dos Afonsos, 2000
[PROLOGUE] DINNER ON THE CEILING CHAMPS-ELYSÉES, 1903
IN DECEMBER 1903, an eleven-year resident of Paris, the Brazilian aeronautical pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, held a small holiday party in his high-ceilinged apartment on the Champs-Elysées. Louis Cartier, the jeweler, was there, as was Princess Isabel, the daughter of the last emperor of Brazil. The other attendees can only be surmised because there was no printed guest list, but his regular dining partners and confidants included George