ting-point. On the 19th of October 1901 the prize was won by
Santos Dumont in the sixth of his airships. The ship had over twenty-two
thousand feet of cubic capacity; its length was more than five times its
diameter; and it was driven by a twelve horse-power petrol motor. It
travelled six and three-quarter miles within the half-hour, part of the
journey being accomplished against a wind of about twelve miles an hour.
This achievement quickened interest in airships and gained a European
fame for Santos Dumont. His later airships were modelled on the egg
rather than the cigar; the smallest of these was so perfectly under
control that he was able, he says, to navigate it by night through the
streets of Paris.

The development of the airship continued for many years to pay toll in
wreckage and loss of life. In 1902 three notable airships were built and
flown in France; two of these were destroyed in the air above Paris,
within a few minutes of their first ascent. Senhor Augusto Severo, a
Brazilian, made a spindle-shaped airship, ninety-eight feet long, driven
by two airscrews, placed one at each end of a framework which formed the
longitudinal axis of the airship. It ascended on the 12th of May, and
when it had reached a height of thirteen hundred feet, exploded in
flames. Senhor Severo and his assistant perished in it. The other ship
was designed by Baron Bradsky, secretary to the German Embassy in Paris;
its total weight was made exactly equivalent to the weight of the air
that it displaced, and it was to be raised by the operation of an
airscrew rotating horizontally under the car. By the action of this
screw the car itself began to rotate, and to drag the ship round with
it; the resistance of the air on the body of the ship put too great a
strain on the steel wires by which the car was suspended; they broke,
and from a height of many hundred feet Baron Bradsky and his engineer,
M. Morin, fell to earth with the car, and were killed. This second
disaster happened on the 13th of October 1902, at Stains, near Paris.
Twelve days later, on the 25th of October, a much more fortunate
airship, the dirigible built for the brothers Lebaudy, made its first
ascent at Moisson. This vessel was more successful than any of its
predecessors, and became the model for airships of the semi-rigid type.
It was fish-shaped, with a capacity of more than eighty thousand cubic
feet, and was driven by a forty horse-power Daimler petrol motor, which