The Conquest of the Air

In 1903, Alberto Santos-Dumont was the toast of Paris, flying his dirigible to his favourite restaurant. When Santos-Dumont made a brief flight in Paris in 1906 in his 14-bis aeroplane, there was no acknowledged antecedent and he was acclaimed in France and elsewhere as the first to fly a powered heavier-than-air craft. Also in 1906, the U.S. Army rejected a proposal from the Wright brothers on the basis that their machine's ability to fly had not been demonstrated. Many in Brazil regard Santos-Dumont as the first successful aviator because his craft did not use an external launch system.

It is generally accepted today that the Wright brothers were the first to make sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flights with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III. Worried that rivals would steal their yet-to-be patented designs, the Wright brothers stopped flying publicly for nearly three years in late 1905.

People began to doubt that the Wrights had ever flown. Sceptics were silenced in August 1908 when Wilbur Wright made a series of spectacular demonstration flights at Le Mans, France, achieving more distance and control than anyone else. The aeroplane in Rousseau's painting of the bridge at Sevres - and his painting of The Anglers - is the biplane of Wilbur Wright, whose image was circulated in Le Petit Journal illustré de la jeunesse on 27 December 1908.

The balloon in the painting appears to be a hot air balloon. On 21 November 1783, the first free flight by humans was made by Pilâtre de Rozier, together with an army officer, the marquis d'Arlandes, in a Montgolfier balloon. The flight began from the grounds of the Château de la Muette close to the Bois de Boulogne park in the western outskirts of Paris. The early flights caused a sensation. During those first few years, souvenirs such as fans, furniture, handkerchiefs, pencil boxes and umbrella tops could be found with ballooning images engraved on them.