Alberto Santos-Dumont

On 19 October 1901 Santos-Dumont flew his airship No. 6 from the Aéro-Club's grounds at Saint-Cloud around the Eiffel Tower and back, the course set for the 100,000-franc Deutsch prize. Whether his time should be counted to his first pass over the judges or to his landing was disputed, and the club's commission voted 15 to 9 to award him the prize on 4 November.

On 23 October 1906 at Bagatelle in Paris, with Aéro-Club de France representatives present, his 14-bis biplane flew about 60 metres, winning the Archdeacon cup for the first flight of over 25 metres. On 12 November 1906 it flew 220 metres in about 21 seconds, the distance recorded by the club's commission. Whether these were the first powered flights is disputed, because the Wright brothers had flown privately in the United States from 1903.

In November 1907 he flew his No. 19, a small monoplane that Scientific American's Paris correspondent described as built in two weeks. It was developed into the Demoiselle of 1909. In 1910 Popular Mechanics published working drawings of the Demoiselle that had been obtained from him and his workshops.

On 8 August 1901, during his second attempt at the Deutsch prize, his airship lost gas and fell onto the roof of the Trocadero hotels; Paris firemen hauled him up by rope. In his own account he gave out the specifications for a new airship, No. 6, that same evening, and it was finished and inflated 22 days later. Historian Henrique Lins de Barros, drawing on the press of the time, adds that he tested the surviving motor in front of the crowd.

Ordering a replacement on the day of a near-fatal fall sits alongside the profile's high persistence score. It was one of several crashes between 1898 and 1907 that each led to a new or rebuilt machine. Persistence

In 1909 Santos-Dumont told the newspaper Le Matin that anyone could build his Demoiselle aeroplane and ask him for the plans. In June 1910 Popular Mechanics published the drawings, stating that the machine was 'unencumbered by patent rights' and that he had made it available to the world. Back in 1901, before the Deutsch prize flight, he had pledged the prize money to the poor of Paris and to his workmen.

Giving away a design and prize money that others might have kept is consistent with the profile's impact motivation score. He was wealthy, so these gestures cost him less than they would have cost many inventors, which is one reason that row is kept moderate. Impact Motivation

In 1898 Santos-Dumont fitted a petroleum engine from a motor tricycle under a balloon filled with hydrogen, a highly flammable gas. Fellow aeronauts urged him to use an electric motor instead; he later told a journalist that 'from the beginning everybody was against the idea'. His first airship flew on 20 September 1898, and the light petroleum engine stayed central to his airships and aeroplanes.

Choosing the engine that experienced balloonists warned against offers one example of the profile's independent thinking. Most of what we know about those objections comes from his own accounts and an authorized interview, which is why that row carries only moderate confidence. Independent Thinking