Santos-Dumont flew the 14-bis on October 23, 1906. The flight, before a crowd in a Paris park, covered about sixty metres and was the first powered flight in Europe to be officially witnessed and recorded. He was a hero at once. It was enough.
He was Brazilian and a dandy. Santos-Dumont had made his name flying small airships around Paris, and he turned to heavier-than-air machines with the same nerve. His aircraft was a strange boxy thing of canvas and bamboo, with the propeller behind the pilot. It looked wrong. It flew.
The crowd saw it rise. The 14-bis lifted off the ground, flew a short distance, and landed, and the officials present recorded the time and distance and made it official. A man had left the ground under power in front of witnesses, and no one could doubt it now.
The claim of first flight was disputed. The Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk in 1903, but in secret and with little public record, while Santos-Dumont's flight was open and witnessed. In Europe, and in Brazil, he was held to be the true pioneer.
The debate has never fully ended. What is certain is that Santos-Dumont proved flight to the world, and his courage and showmanship made the new invention public property. A small man in a straw hat lifted a box of sticks into the air, and the age of aviation began in front of a crowd.