"No. 5"

XVIII

At the same time that Graf von Zeppelin was developing his Luftschiffen, Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932), a wealthy Brazilian living in Paris, was perfecting his dirigibles. In 1901, Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch Prize, an important aeronautical prize, for flying his airship around the Eiffel Tower.

Santos-Dumont in his airship No. 5

There was some problem with the timing of his flight. Different judges' watches showed different elapsed time. As a consequence, Santos-Dumont asked his friend Louis Cartier, a mechanical engineer, to devise a pilot's timepiece with an accurate second hand that could be worn on the wrist for a quick glance. Cartier's design became so popular that he went into the precision watchmaking business.

After the Wright brothers successfully flew an airplane in 1903, Santos-Dumont ignored airships and focused his primary attention on fixed-wing powered flight craft.