Alberto Santos-Dumont, heir to a Brazilian coffee fortune, became one of the most famous people on earth when he steered his airship around the Eiffel Tower in 1901. This episode follows the self-funded inventor from driving steam locomotives as a boy to mastering hydrogen-filled dirigibles above Paris.

We then explore his 1906 flights in the 14-bis, the debate over his claim versus the Wright brothers, and his decision to publish the Demoiselle plans for free. The story ends in tragedy, as the weaponization of aircraft in World War I, a wartime arrest for suspected espionage and declining health shadowed his final years.

• How independent wealth let Santos-Dumont iterate rapidly without government funding
• The dramatic attempts to win the Deutsch Prize, including a crash into the Rothschild chestnut trees
• Why the 14-bis used a canard design and took off under its own power before official witnesses
• The open-source spirit behind publishing the Demoiselle ultralight blueprints in 1910
• Debates over his illness and the heartbreak that followed the 1928 seaplane crash in Rio