[Editor's Note: According to the Brazilians, no one saw the flight of the Wright Brother's first flight, The Flyer, in 1903, and the flight in 1905 was not officially ratified. But the 1906 flight by Santos Dumont in his 14 BIS in Paris was ratified and registered].
Independently of who flew first and which flight proved more, the fact is that Santos-Dumont's Demoiselle surpassed all other in popularity and innovation as soon as it appeared. With his extraordinary capacity to understand the significance of these new aeronautical concepts, the Brazilian inventor executed great technological leaps in a very small number of steps, enormously speeding the evolution of aviation in its early years.
And unlike the Wright Brothers, Santos-Dumont made it a point not to patent his inventions. He freely distributed the blueprints for the Demoiselle to anyone who requested them. They were published in 1910 by the American magazine "Popular Mechanics" and made the tiny "dragonfly" the most popular plane in the United States and Europe. "The first airplane factory was for the Demoiselle," said Botelho.
And despite the long-standing dispute, the two aeronautical traditions will fly together, side by side, in the demonstration in Dayton, showing the world that there is room in the world for more than one father of aviation.
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