As far back as 1901, the Wright brothers used a wind tunnel to design their first powered airplane, the Flyer I, which performed four short flights on December 17th, 1903, at Kitty Hawk. On November 12th, 1906, Santos-Dumont established three official records, for speed, distance and time, aboard his Santos-Dumont 14bis. Louis Bl‚riot crossed the English Channel on July 25th, 1909. The same year, Gustave Eiffel built his first wind tunnel, the Auteuil wind tunnel.