Santos Dumont’s flight was the first public flight in the world

Santos Dumont’s flight was the first public flight in the world

On October, 23, 1906, Santos-Dumont presented himself at Bagatelle (near Paris) with the Oiseau de Proie II, a modification of the original model. At 4:45 pm, Santos-Dumont started the engine. The plane lifted off and flew for 60 metres, without taking advantage of headwinds, ramps, catapults, slopes, or other devices. The flight had taken place solely by the aircraft's own means, and Europeans at the time believed it was the first such achievement. The crowd celebrated, ran up to the pilot and carried him off in triumph. The judges had been overcome with emotion and forgot to time and track the flight, and due to this the record was not made official. Santos-Dumont’s flight was the first public flight in the world, so he was hailed as the the inventor of the airplane across Europe. Henrique Lins de Barros (a Brazilian physicist and Santos-Dumont expert) has argued that the Wrights did not fulfill the conditions set up during this period to distinguish a true flight from a prolonged hop; Santos-Dumont, on the other hand, took off unassisted, publicly flew a predetermined length in front of experts, and then safely landed.