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(Handwritten) February 22 Friday at Basdeck Dispatch Pittsburg 6 Jau 1907

This Year Man Flies, Says Dumont; And Paris Automobile World Believes

Motor Car Factories Go to Work on New Aeroplanes and Motors.

SOME BIG PRIZES OFFERED

Santos' New Machine to Be Ready This Week and it Will Not Be a Toy.
By STERLING HEILIG [Special Letter to The Dispatch.]
Paris, Dec. 29.- "This year man (next two lines cut off) convinced of it that we are witnessing a phenomenal aeroplane scramble.
     The Marquis de Dion has put the De Dion-Bouton factory to work on two aeroplanes and six experimental motors.  Ernes Archdeacon is building a single-box machine with a 70-horse-power motor of his own devising.  The Italian Vina has his single-plane refitting with one of the remarkable 12-cylinder motors of which I shall speak presently.  Serge de Bolontoff, son of the Princess Wiasensky, is removing his plant from Vevey to Paris.
     The Count de la Vanix, who hs hitherto despised everything but spherical ballooning, has ordeed an aeroplane with propeller force to drive it 37 miles an hour.  A.V. Rol, the Londoner who admittedly follows the Wrights,  has come to Paris to profit by mechanical facilities and be ready for the coming mixup.  Henri Deutsch is paying for two spare-no-expense copies of th Bird of Prey, while the Bleriot-Voisin combination has abandoned its original form to copy the same winner of the two first heavier-than-the-air prizes-the Archdeacon Cup and the Aero Club Prize.
     Probably a full list of aeroplanes building in Paris would include half the great auto manufacturers.  Giradot of the C.G.V., for example, is admittedly a candidate; the younger Clement is backing a school friend inventor; many are working in secret; some of the productions will never be heard of; but I cannot exaggerate the movement of anticipation, intensified by Santos-Dumont's two flights.
 Prizes That Are Tempting
     Sensational rumors circulate.  "Since Santos made his combination with the Antoinette motor people, he will do the rest of his experiments in private," run one story.  "Then, one day, their perfected aeroplane will dart over Paris.  They will scoop all the big prizes."
     True, the prizes-apart from the Daily Mail's London-Manchester $50,000  - are still nebulous; but that several heave ones will be founded in Paris early in 1907 is an open secret.  For example, one of the remors of the Automobile Salon has it that the combined Automobile and Aero clubs would have already offered on sufficient to tempt the Wright brothers to Paris had not the French Government asked them to patriotically desist-not to spoil its dickering for the secret.
     Desirous to get at facts instead of rumors, I traced Santos from the Automobile Salon to Colombin's tea-place, lost him at the Ritz, picked up the trail at his sumptuous apartment in the Champs Elysees, and finally caught him in a garage, superintending alteration in his 120-horse-power Mercedes racer.
     "I'm going to Rome for the holidays," he said.  "Got to make the vehicle more comfortable."
     Certainly he goes via Marseilles and the Riviera, but cutting the icy winds of Northern France and 60 Miles per hour to get there is typical of the sporting crankiness of these up-to-date Parisians who are as much at home in workshops as in salons, who pass from pink-lit luxury to the cold grind of the factories, from the babble and four-frou of beauty to the friendship of artisans.

The Aluminum Aeroplane.
"Experiment in private?" laughed Santos. "Not on your life, I wouldn't put that affront on the friends who have encouraged me. The story comes from my endeavor to find a better place that Bagatelle, which is public ground. Look you! After winning the Aero Club prize I had [[??]]

new flyer will take nearly 50-and will have nearer 80!"
     "The Antoinette motor?" I suggested. "Since you have gone in with Bleriot you will profit by skilled aid."

Santos Not Combined.
     "I have gone in with no one," answered Santos quickly. "M. Bleriot is the backer of a big industrial enterprise that makes a wonderful motor for my purposes. It also makes automobiles, phares and searchlights. That is one thing. I am buying motors from them. On the other hand, M. Bleriot is backing the aeroplane experiments of a school friend, Voisin. When it came a cropper at Bagatelle the other day I gave them permission to store it in many hangar at Neuilly [[??]] St. James. There, too, they will repair it, adapting the lines of my Bird of Prey. Why not? The more the merrier! We want to fly!"
     The day previous I Had pushed my way through the crowd around the Antoinette stand at the automobile salon to take a look at the extraordinary motor. By its suppression of the flywheel it becomes easily the lightest motor in the world. Santos now explained to me this novelty. 
     "A one-cylinder steam engine needs a flywheel to carry its piston past the dead point, but the moment it has two cylinders a steam engine does not require a flywheel-donkey engines on board ship do not have them. All right. Now, to correspond with a two-cylinder steam engine in this respect how many cylinders must a petroleum motor possess? Evidently four times [[?]] many, because where in a steam engine you have two pushes for each turn, the petroleum motor gives but one push even two two turns-you know the cycle, driving in gasoline, mixing it with air, igniting it, explosion, pushing out consumed gas, etc. Therefore, when you have an eight-cylinder petroleum motor it is as if you had a two-cylin [[?]]
tuberculosis serum, they admit that the story has encouraged them to the point of flying.
"We Shall Surely Fly."
     "I hope the Wright brothers will fly over Paris," said Ernest Archdeacon, as he stopped a moment to glance at the Mercedes and talk routes to Rom with Santos. "It will be far simpler to buy one of their machines than to risk our necks in experimental constructions. But whether they come or don't come, we shall fly!
     "Their good work is really done!" he added. "Their story came to us at the psychological moment.  It has given us the necessary encouragement to do the rest!"
     "Surely we shall fly!" said Captain Ferber.  He is the Parisian who has been
[[image]]

[[image]]
Santos on the "Bird of Prey." The 8-cylinder Antoinette motor is below him on the left.

When the reporters got there Dr. Thomas and the helicoptere hadn't arrived but there was a crowd of men and women and boys near the Seventy-second street station of the subway. Pretty soon the Thomas family arrived in the helicoptere and an automobile, the doctor proudly driving his overgrown tricycle, and Mrs. Thomas, the baby and Tilly, the maid, standing by in an auto in case he needed a tow. The wind wagon rounded the corner into Broadway, its gasolene motor making more racket than a motorcycle. The photographers took up positions, the populace cheered and Dr. Thomas bowed. Then the motor quit thumping and cracking, gave a tired sigh and went out of business. The doctor frowned and hopped off. Somebody laughed unfeelingly and the doctor got red. "Get away from here, blast it!" he said, as the crowd closed in around the sick wind wagon. "The reporters and photographers may stay though. Anybody want to take my picture?" After the photographers had done their duty Dr. Thomas towed the wind wagon to a garage near Seventy-third street and Broadway, went to work on his own automobile and fitted its motor to the helicoptere. A few minutes afterward he mounted the breeze cart and set sail up Broadway. This time the big four bladed propeller forward gripped the air and pulled the machine along swiftly. The photographers took more pictures and the doctor whirled her around and started back. Then a mounted policeman, a cop named Brady, who labored under the impression that it was his business to keep traffic undisturbed in Broadway, rode down toward the doctor. Thomas got off the winged screw, adjusted his medals so they would show better in the pictures, and faced Brady, while the crowd tittered. "Yuh'll have to cut it out," said Brady. "What d'ye think this street is for, anyway? Show me your license." "Sir," said the doctor, "you mistake? This is a scientific experiment, conducted in the presence of the public and the press. This is a helicoptere, built for the purpose of testing the force and lifting power of winds." "Produce your license or beat it," said Brady, preparing to dismount. 
I have an automobile license which ought to cover it," said the doctor, getting in line with the cameras. "This thing ain't an automobile," said the mounted cop. "I ain't sure whether any license would cover it. Now go away from here." Dr. Thomas moved the helicoptere over to the sidewalk and then called the reporters around him. He was sure that the problme of Polar research would be solved as soon as he had improved the winged screw and further tested it. "Little things will go wrong," he said. "You will observe that the propeller is held in place by find piano wire. The other day the piano wire broke, permitting the propeller to free itself, and it whirled into the air, higher and higher, until it disappeared over the top of a tall building." The camera man took his picture again. "To avoid interference by the police," he went on. "I shall probably conduct my next experiment in the open country. If the photographers would like to take my picture, I am ready." They took him again. Brady stayed on the job until the doctor and his wind wagon had gone and then rode thoughtfully away.