The Hidden History of Flight

Enough cannot be said about Alberto.  He literally invented human flight, was the first man to take off into the air and return to the spot in a vehicle.  An AirShip.  In 1899.

He also reinvented the Internal Combustion Engine, which prior to his modifications, had largely been "internal" in title only.  He did this specifically to build AirShips and usher in the era of flight.  Which he succeeded at.

Alberto Santos Dumont, the father of human flight, AirShips, the modern internal combustion engine, and the monoplane

He was a master of rapid iterative design.  Which is the primary design initiative of OpenAirShips.  He rapidly built many AirShips from 1898 to 1904.  They were named sequentially numbers 1-10, however, number 9 was used extensively as his daily driver in 1903, and received the nickname "The Little Runabout".  He used this AirShip like a moped and would meet friends for lunch in town, go to purchase groceries, and several other daily driver tasks.

Despite his immense engineering success in the field of AirShips, he eventually followed the trend in aviation of the day and began building airplanes.  He also had remarkable success in this field, and likely flew an airplane successfully BEFORE the Wright brothers.

Nevertheless, his airplane designs became the underpinning for our current airplane design, namely, a large wing in front, a smaller wing in back, and a tail rudder for aerial navigation.

He also wrote a book that is available on BookShop.org.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont