History of aviation – September 16, 1909. While carrying out tests at the controls of his airplane called “Demoiselle” above Saint-Cyr, and for some time, the Franco-Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont will be at the origin, on this Thursday, September 16, 1909, of a remarkable flight.
On the side of his monoplane, he will install a twenty-kilogram load and carry out a flight at a height of 30 meters, under the gaze of numerous witnesses. Around a hundred people attended this great feat.
A performance which follows the record for launch distance to take off, established by himself the day before, on September 15, 1909: he had thus needed only seventy meters and six 1/5 seconds to take flight, against eighty meters for the latest record holder, namely aviator Curtiss. Pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont never stops filling the pages of the newspapers, the latter being very attentive to the slightest progress of the pioneers of the air.
