Evening Star Newspaper, June 25, 1933, Page 66

[ —— = THE SUNDAY STAR., WASHINGTO N, D. C, JUNE 25 1933. e e THE FIRST WOMAN TO FLY A DIRIGIBLE Aida Breckinridge, Wife ofLifl({be rgh’s Attorney, Flew Santos Dumont’s “No. 9" Over Paris in 1903 and Still Remains the Only One of Her Sex to Solo in a Blimp. BY HELEN S. WATERHOUSE. HIRTY years ago, during the rule ot the first Roosevelt, while Goethals was digging away on the Panama Canal, and Carrie Nation was breaking up Kancas saloons with her hatchet, and Joe Cannon -was chewing his stogie planning to run for Speaker, and Dan Patcn was being groomed to break the world pacing record, and the Wright brothers were trying to build a flying machine in their bicycle shop at Dayton, an American girl flew a dirigible alone scross the Bois in Paris. And in the 30 years since no other woman, as far as the records show, has ever piloted any dirigibles whatever. i Back in the shadowy early days of aviation, indeed, before there was any aviation, before the Boeings, the Fokkers, the Handley Pages, the Nieuports were dreamed of, while Congress was still laughing over Langley's folly, and Germany over the mad old Count Zeppelin, and the Wright brotbers were too obscure even to rate a laugh, another American, from the southern continent, was building the precursors to the Graf Zeppelin, and the U. S. S. Macon, and had intrusted the controls for a solo flight to a high-spirited young American girl. And the story had lain completely buried ever since. «American girl, member of New York's four hundred, flies Santos Dumont’s dirigible over Paris,” there flamed the eight-column headline of a yellowed newspaper of June 26, 190%. ‘THE girl was Aida de Acosta, member of an old New York family—one of the beautiful sisters, the best known being Mrs. Philip Lydig. After her marriage she subordinated a brilliant social career to one of social welfare. She is married now to Col. Henry Breckinridge, Assist- ant Secretary of War under Wilson, director of Pan-American Airways and attorney to Col. Lindbergh. They have two children. The young Brazilian, Santos Dumont, sports- man, aviator, who had captivated the imagina- tion of France and the world by his daring and engineering achievements, was at the height of his career. He had just won the Deutsch prize of 100,000 francs for flying from St. Cloud 7 miles across Paris, around the Eiffel Tower and return—prize money which he promptly divided among his faithful helpers and the poor oX Paris. He was the Lindbergh of his day; and the fact that the young woman who soloed in his dirigible is today a close friend of Lindbergh’s serves to link these air heroes of two generations in an unusual manner. The ship Miss de Acosta flew was the Number Nine, a little job, only 9,218 cubic feet capacity, much smaller than the big Number Six, which had made the Eiffel Tower flight. That had carried 22,239 cubic feet of hydrogen; it was almost a sixteenth the size of the United States Army’s new TC-13 just launched, and about one-three hundredth as large as the U. S. S. Macon. The contrast is just as striking in other respects, too. Though all of Dumont’s airships were one- passenger craft, the Number Nine was purely for sport. Santos Dumont drag-poled it down the Champs-Elysees one morning before Paris was up, flying lower than the buildings that flanked the famous avenue, debated about flying under the Arc de Triomphe, but decided to follow the rules of the road and fly around it to the right, finally landing for a cup of coffee at his own door. HE part that Santos Dumont played in the development of aviation, particularly in lighter-than-air, has received, perhaps, too little credit. Many men had tried to build dirigible bal- Joons, ever since the brothers Montgolfier had demonstrated in 1783 that a confined gas would carry people into the air and the wind push them along. The Brazilian was the first man to build a practical ship that would actually go aloft and answer its controls and that could be steered in any direction. And with the exception of the test crew of Count Zeppelin's first rigid airship, three years earlier, no human being had flown a dirigible before Santos Dumont. Mrs. Breckinridge is not inclined to take her exploit of 1903 too seriously. “It was a school- girl prank,” she laughs. Still the fact remains that no one else in the world except Santos Dumont and Count Zeppelin's test crew had ever taken an airship aloft before her. We’'ll let the designer tell how she happened to go. In his book “Dans L'Air,” published in 1904, Dumont describes the historic incident thus: “The young and very pretty heroine, well known in Kew York society, had come on several occasions to visit my station with friends. She expressed to me an extraordinary desire to man- age the airship alone. “‘You mean you would have the courage w0 be taken up in a free balloon, with no one handling the guide rope?” I asked. ‘Made- A photograph taken by a French photographer in 1903, showing Aida de Acosta, now Mrs. Henry Breckinridge, flying Santos moiselle, I thank you for your confidence!” But she answered, ‘It's nothing to be taken up. 1 desire to go up alone and fly freely as you.' “And,” explains the young Dumont, “the fact that she would take several lessons in the handling of the motor and machinery, proves, I suppose, my confidence in the Number Nine.” Mrs. Breckinridge vividly remembers the three lessons which took place in the hangar. “He showed me how to steer the big rudder, how to shift ballast and drop weights, and how to work the propellers,” she said. “There were three gears for three different kinds of speed, slow, medium and very fast. You worked them by pulling out just one lever. “Even when the great day came, I did not take him sericusly when he said, ‘You are to fly over the Bois today.’ But just before I took off, he worked out a code of signals for me with a handkerchief, telling me that he would be on the ground below at all times during my flight. “‘Watch my signals,’ be said, ‘I will follow you with a bicycle. When 1 wave the hand- kerchief right, steer right. When I wave left, steer left. When I circle the handkerchief, Jet the prop go as fast as it can. If I drop it descend gently.’ “Then, looking very solemn, be tied a cord connected with the gas valve to my wrist. ‘If you get too high in the air and get frightened, pull that cord,” he said. ‘It will let the gas out of the bag and then you will descend. If you faint, your weight will come down with some- thing of a crash, but it will not kill you.’ 11" THEN I was ready. They started the engine. With my hand on the steering wheel, which looked just like the big steering wheel of an automobile of that day, and my eyes on the dial in front, I soared out of the hangar and upward. I remember passing over the Cate Madri. My little petrol engine was working smartly and smoothly, but it made a terrible noise.” Santos Dumont, meanwbile, seized a girl's bicycle (which he used instead of a boy's be- cause he said he could get off and on easler) and started pedaling along the road rapidly, beneath the balloon. Mrs. Breckinridge recalis Dumont’s dirigible over Paris. Mrs. Aida de Acosta Breckinridge, first woman to solo in a dirigible, as she looks today. that she kept her eyes on him all of the time that she was aloft. “He worked harder on his pedals than I did on my airship,” she laughed. “But never once did I need any help. The ship handled beauti- fully, flying at constant elevation.” Once she crossed a field where there were high fences, and Santos had to leap from his “bike” and in the delay got left behind the ship. Finally she saw him waving the signal tc land. The landing field he picked was the polo field at Bagatelle, where an English-American polo match was about to start. The field pre- sented a colorful picture of blazers and bright- banded straw hats, ruffled foulards and gay Tree Planting Only Part of Program RKPORETATION gives a not altogether accurate impression of the work to be carried on in the reforestation camps this Summer. In reality, reforestation”is only one part c¢f a four- part program. Intended primarily as a relief measure to put some 250,000 unemployed men to work, it serves to focus attention on the need for conservation of one of America’'s fast dwindling essential resources, the huge forests which have been ravaged by fire and by careless woodsmen. Reforestation, of course, implies a replanting of cut-over or burned-over areas, but benefits to be derived from this part of the work must necessarily be long delayed, for timber, under the best of conditions, cannot be cut before 20 vears from new plantings and 30 years is a more likely period. Three other angles of the work are of more immediate benefit for they are aimed at pres- ervation of what now exists. The existing forests are to be protected from fire. Heavy growths of underbrush are to be eliminated and forest diseases and insect enemies are to be combated. An alliéd problem, eresion, also is to be at- tacked. The elimination of underbrush and the thin- ning of young second-growth are of prime im- portance. The underbrush brings a real threat in case of fire for a forest conflagraticn, ance started, feeds on the underbrush and deadfalls like so much tinder which carries the flames crackling and roaring from tree to tree. This ground growth also serves to harbor insect enemies and plant diseases over from one sea- son to the next. One of the first works being undertaken in the forestry camps is the cleaning up of such conditions. The building of lookout stations, stringing of new telephcne lines, construction of roadways and similar works will aid in prompt discovery and prompt rushing of fire- fighters to the battle when fires are discovered. Far too much of the farm land of the country is subject to erosion which, through gullying and flooding during heavy downpours or early Spring thaws, sweeps away the valuable top soil which requires hundreds of years to build up through natural means. The young forestry camp workers will build flood breaks, fill in deep gullies, plant ycung, quick-growing trees and undertake similar activities which will serve to delay the running off of surface water during storm conditions. Naturally, they will plant young seedlings on cut over and burned over land, but this work, while important and holding promise of financial return in the future which will probably more than finance the present activities, is by no means the sole object of their work. The camps will serve to awaken public interest in the forests and the necessity for their prctection and development. More probably will be ac- complished this Summer alone toward enlight- ening the public to the problem and its logical solution than all the years of educative wcrk carried on by forestry experts in the past several decades, parasols. Santos Dumont had the Latin fiair for showmanship. As the ship approached over the poplar trees of the Bois, the crowd surged forward, then gazed incredulously. For the pilot was ceitainly not Santos Du- mont, but a trim tightiy-corseted little figure with a big picture hat fluttering out behind ber, “I will never forget how those people gazed at me as I pulled the valve cord which released the hydrogen gas, and floated gently down,” recalls Mrs. Breckinridge. “But the question uppermost in my mind was how I was to get out of that terrible basket. “You see, Santos weighed only 110 pounds while I weighed 130, and while he could shift about easily in the basket, I was wedged in. “In my long black and white foulard gown, the question of alighting in front of all those men was an embarrassing one. Finally, I worked my way out as far as I could by myself, and then the six ground-crew men gallantly tipped the basket over on its side and helped me out.” RS. BRECKINIIDGE went back to New York, and in the crowding events of a busy and useful life the incident was more or less buried in her mind, until the arrival of the Graf Zeppelin in New York revived her in- terest in lighter-than-air. Santos Dumont eventually returned to his great coffee plantations in Sao Paulo, where his death occurred last year at the age of 60. Santos Dumont’s little ship had a three- horsepower motor weighing six and a half pounds, as against the Akron and Macon with their eight motors of 560 horsepower each, weighing, with their gearing and prop shafts and radiators, about a ton. Yet in spite of all that he lacked, and the crudity of his ships, this far-seeing Brazilian- American, who quietly stepped into the back- ground of aeronautical bistory after he had done with “playing” with his ships, laid the groundwork on which Zeppelin, Eckener, Arn- stein and the others were to carry on to the perfecting of a Graf Zeppelin and a Macon. New Cotton Seed Use TH:B discovery of the value of cotton segd as a plant food as well as an animal food has been a great stimulant to this by-product cotton industry. Last year more than 500,000 tons of the meal was sold for fertilizer purposes. It has found a considerable use in treating lawns, par- ticularly where an acid condition was desired. It serves not only to stimulate the lawn, but to discourage the growth cf weeds. The De- partment of Agriculture reports that the use of cotton seed meal by gardeners has almost doubled in one year over the figure for 1931. Arsenic Bars Fruit HE close watch which the Federal Food and Drug Administration keeps over the food which is shipped to market is illustrated in the seizing of 33 carloads of apple pomace shipped from the State of Washington. The pomace was found to contain excessive amounts of lead and arsenic, which was de- posited on the fruit during spraying periods. Corn Grower Aided Anmmmproductionofm corn and a heavy underproduction in South Africa has opened up foreign markets for corn grown in the United States to an en- couraging extent. The American corn, like wheat, depends upon foreign sales for surplus and disposal and, like wheat, finds cheaper pro- duction elsewhere a decided advantage i the rush for markets,