The oil magnate Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe had offered 100,000 francs for the first aircraft to fly from the Aéro-Club de France grounds at Saint-Cloud, round the tower and back, about 11 kilometers, within half an hour. After several failed attempts and one crash, Santos-Dumont made it in his cigar-shaped, engine-driven dirigible, though the judges argued over whether he had finished in time. He was awarded the prize and gave much of it to his mechanics and to the poor of Paris.
Santos-Dumont, the son of a wealthy coffee planter, moved to Paris in the 1890s and became a celebrity for flying his small airships over the city, sometimes landing outside cafés. His designs combined a hydrogen-filled envelope with a petrol engine and propeller, which made the craft steerable rather than drifting like a balloon.
The Deutsch prize, announced in 1900, was a test of whether such airships could be controlled over a set course. In August 1901 Santos-Dumont's No. 5 lost gas and crashed onto the roof of a hotel, leaving him dangling from the wreck until firefighters rescued him. He built No. 6 in weeks.
On October 19 he rounded the tower in about nine minutes, but the engine faltered on the way back, and he reached the finish in 29 minutes and 30 seconds. The mooring line was secured some 40 seconds later, and the committee debated whether this counted before awarding him the prize. Santos-Dumont later flew heavier-than-air machines, and in 1906 his 14-bis made the first powered flight in Europe to be officially observed. He asked his friend Louis Cartier to design a wristwatch he could read while flying.
Key people: Alberto Santos-Dumont, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe