The little Demoiselle has been on my mind for the last few days so I’ve been doing some reading. It’s not that I’d fly a faithful replica but I do find the early airplanes fascinating, especially how they were built at a time before things we take for granted like good glue. I don’t think the Demoiselle design ever saw the popularity of the contemporary Bleriot XI, at least not in North America, but it is interesting to see they were factory produced as well as having plans made available for amateur builders. It’s in a lot of ways arguably the first ultralight.
I quite like this quote from the June 1910 build article in Popular Mechanics:
“Of course the possession of plans is the basis without which it would be impossible to set about building the airship, but at the same time it is necessary to possess some mechanical skill and ability, and plenty of common sense.
In presenting the plans through Popular Mechanics Magazine we trust that no one of our readers will start to build unless he possesses these qualities, especially the latter, without which he will never be able to accomplish anything.”
Anyways, here are a couple period articles on the thing if you’re as interested in this stuff as I am. Feel free to add more if you have any.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popu...e_Famous_"Demoiselle"_Santos-Dumont_Monoplanehttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popu...e_Famous_"Demoiselle"_Santos-Dumont_Monoplane
https://www.oocities.org/vjaqua/BUILD.html
I quite like this quote from the June 1910 build article in Popular Mechanics:
“Of course the possession of plans is the basis without which it would be impossible to set about building the airship, but at the same time it is necessary to possess some mechanical skill and ability, and plenty of common sense.
In presenting the plans through Popular Mechanics Magazine we trust that no one of our readers will start to build unless he possesses these qualities, especially the latter, without which he will never be able to accomplish anything.”
Anyways, here are a couple period articles on the thing if you’re as interested in this stuff as I am. Feel free to add more if you have any.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popu...e_Famous_"Demoiselle"_Santos-Dumont_Monoplanehttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popu...e_Famous_"Demoiselle"_Santos-Dumont_Monoplane
https://www.oocities.org/vjaqua/BUILD.html
