Blériot

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Having made a fortune with his patented automobile lamp, Blériot started experimenting with model aircraft in about 1900. He tried a flapping-wing layout which, surprisingly, did fly, but a full-size version was a failure. Blériot tried out a wide variety of designs: a biplane float-glider built with Gabriel Voisin; a powered float-plane with ellipsoidal biplane wings; a canard (tail-first) monoplane; a tandem monoplane; and in 1907 a monoplane of conventional layout. This last was not an immediate success, but it led to the Type XI in which Blériot made history by flying from France to England on 25 July 1909.

Without a doubt, Blériot was an accomplished pilot and a successful manufacturer of aircraft, but he sometimes employed others as designers (a fact not made known at the time). It is now accepted that much of the credit for the design of the Type XI should go to Raymond Saulnier, who later made his name with the Morane-Saulnier Company.

Blériot-Aéronautique became one of the leading manufacturers of aircraft and by the outbreak of war in 1914 some eight hundred aircraft had been produced. By 1918, aircraft were being built at the rate of eighteen per day. The Blériot company continued to produce aircraft until it was nationalized in 1937.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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When Louis Blériot made his historic flight across the English Channel in 1909, the credit for the success of the flight naturally went to the pilot. Few people thought about the designer of the successful aeroplane, and those who did assumed it was Blériot himself. Blériot did design several of the aeroplanes bearing his name, but the cross- Channel No. XI was mainly designed by his friend Raymond Saulnier, a fact not; broadcast at the time.

In 1911 the Morane-Saulnier company was founded in Paris by Léon (1885–1918) and Robert (1886–1968) Morane and Raymond Saulnier, who became Chief Designer. Flying a Morane-Saulnier, Roland Garros made a recordbreaking flight to a height of 5,611 m (18,405 ft) in 1912, and the following year he made the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean. Morane-Saulnier built a series of "parasol" monoplanes which were very widely used during the early years of the First World War. With the wing placed above the fuselage, the pilot had an excellent downward view for observation purposes, but the propeller ruled out a forward-firing machine gun. During 1913–4, Raymond Saulnier was working on an idea for a synchronized machine gun to fire between the blades of the propeller. He could not overcome certain technical problems, so he devised a simple alternative: metal deflector plates were fitted to the propeller, so if a bullet hit the blade it did no harm. Roland Garros, flying a Type L Parasol, tested the device in action during April 1915 and was immediately successful. This opened the era of the true fighter aircraft. Unfortunately, Garros was shot down and the Germans discovered his secret weapon: they improved on the idea with a fully synchronized machine gun fitted to the Fokker E 1 monoplane. The Morane-Saulnier company continued in business until 1963, when it was taken over by the Potez Group.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Léon Levavasseur was an artist who became an electrical engineer and in 1902 Technical Director of a firm called Société Antoinette, headed by Jules Gastambide (Antoinette being the name of Gastambide's daughter). Levavasseur's first aeroplane, built in 1903, was a bird-like machine which did not fly. The engine showed promise, however, and Levavasseur developed it for use in motor boats from 1904. In 1906 he produced two Antoinette aero-engines, one of 24 hp (18 kW) and the other 50 hp (37 kW), which were used by Alberto Santos-Dumont and several other early designers. In February 1908 Levavasseur produced a tractor (propeller at the front) monoplane, the Gastambide- Mengin I, for two of his colleagues. Flown by a mechanic, this managed several short hops before it crash-landed. It was rebuilt and improved to become the Antoinette II and later in the year became the first monoplane to complete a circular flight. Levavasseur then went on to produce a series of Antoinette monoplanes which, with the monoplanes of Louis Blériot, challenged the pusher biplanes of Voisin and Farman. The rivalry between the Antoinettes and Blériots made headlines in 1909 when they were being prepared to win the Daily Mail prize for the first flight across the English Channel. Hubert Latham took off in his Antoinette on 19 July 1909, but his engine failed and he had to be rescued from the sea. On 25 July Louis Blériot took off in his Blériot No. XI and won both the prize and worldwide acclaim. In 1911 Latham flew his Antoinette across the Golden Gate at San Francisco. The same year Levavasseur built a revolutionary streamlined three-seater monoplane with cantilever wings (no wire bracing), but this Monobloc Antoinette failed; with it the line of Antoinettes came to an end.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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As a boy, Paul MacCready was an enthusiastic builder of flying model aeroplanes; he became US National Junior Champion in 1941. He learned to fly and became a pilot with the US Navy in 1943. he developed an interest in gliding in 1945 and became National Soaring Champion in 1948 and 1949. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) as a meteorologist, he set up Meteorological Research Inc. In 1953 MacCready became the first American to win the World Gliding Championship. When hang-gliders became popular in the early 1970s MacCready studied their performance and compared them with soaring birds: he came to the conclusion that man-powered flight was a possibility. In an effort to generate an interest in man-powered flight, a cash prize had been offered in Britain by Henry Kremer, a wealthy industrialist and fitness enthusiast. A man-powered aircraft had to complete a one-mile (1.6km) figure-of-eight course in order to win. However, the figure-of-eight proved to be a major obstacle and the prize money was increased over the years to £50,000. In 1976 MacCready and his friend Dr Peter Lissaman set to work on their computer and came up with their optimum design for a man-powered aircraft. The Gossamer Condor had a wing span of 96 ft (27.4 m), about the same as a Douglas DC-9 airliner, yet it weighed just 70 lb (32 kg). It was a tail-first design with a pedaldriven pusher propeller just behind the pilot. Bryan Allen, a biologist, pilot and racing cyclist, joined the team to provide the muscle-power. After over two hundred flights they were ready to make an attempt on the prize, and on 23 August 1977 they succeeded where many had failed, in 7 minutes. Kremer then offered £100,000 for the first manpowered flight across the English Channel. Many thought this would be impossible, but MacCready and his team set about the task of designing a new machine based on their Condor, which they called the Gossamer Albatross. Bryan Allen also had a major task: getting fit for a flight which might take three hours of pedalling. The weather was more of a problem than in California, and after a long delay the Gossamer Albatross took off, on 12 June 1979. After pedalling for 2 hours 49 minutes, Bryan Allen landed in France: it was seventy years since Blériot's flight, although Blériot was much quicker.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Gabriel Voisin was one of a group of aviation pioneers working in France c. 1905. One of the leaders of this group was a rich lawyer-sportsman, Ernest Archdeacon. For a number of years they had been building gliders based on those of the Wright brothers. Archdeacon's glider of 1904 was flown by Voisin, who went on to assist in the design and manufacture of gliders for Archdeacon and Louis Blériot, including successful float-gliders. Gabriel Voisin was joined by his brother Charles in 1905 and they set up the first commercial aircraft factory. As the Voisins had limited funds, they had to seek customers who could afford to indulge in the fashionable hobby of flying. One was Santos- Dumont, who commissioned Voisin to build his "14 bis" aeroplane in 1906.

Early in 1907 the Voisins built their first powered aeroplane, but it was not a success.

Later that year they completed a biplane for a Paris sculptor, Léon Delagrange, and another for Henri Farman. The basic Voisin was a biplane with the engine behind the pilot and a "pusher" propeller. Pitching was controlled by biplane elevators forward of the pilot and rudders were fitted to the box kite tail, but there was no control of roll.

Improvements were gradually introduced by the Voisins and their customers, such as Farman. Incidentally, to flatter their clients the Voisins often named the aircraft after them, thus causing some confusion to historians. Many Voisins were built up until 1910, when the company's fortunes sank. Competition was growing, the factory was flooded, and Charles left. Gabriel started again, building robust biplanes of steel construction. Voisin bombers were widely used during the First World War, and a subsidiary factory was built in Russia.

In August 1917, Voisin sold his business when the French Air Ministry decided that Voisin aeroplanes were obsolete and that the factory should be turned over to the building of engines. After the war he started another business making prefabricated houses, and then turned to manufacturing motor cars. From 1919 to 1939 his company produced various models, mainly for the luxury end of the market but also including a few sports and racing cars. In the early 1950s he designed a small two-seater, which was built by the Biscuter company in Spain. The Voisin company finally closed in 1958.

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See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

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Ader, Clément

Bacon, Francis Thomas

Barber, John

Blériot, Louis

Blumlein, Alan Dower

Boeing, William Edward

Boot, Henry Albert Howard

Braun, Wernher Manfred von

Breguet, Louis

Camm, Sir Sydney

Caproni, Giovanni Battista

Cayley, Sir George

Chanute, Octave Alexandre

Charles, Jacques Alexandre César

Cierva, Juan de la

Clarke, Arthur Charles

Cobham, Sir Alan John

Cockerell, Christopher Sydney

Cody, "Colonel" Samuel Franklin

Curtiss, Glenn Hammond

Dassault, Marcel

de Havilland, Sir Geoffrey

Douglas, Donald Wills

Dunne, John William

Ellehammer, Jacob Christian Hansen

Fabre, Henri

Farman, Henri

Flettner, Anton

Flügge-Lotz, Irmgard

Focke, E.H.Heinrich

Fokker, Anthony Herman Gerard

Giffard, Baptiste Henry Jacques

Goddard, Dr Robert Hutchings

Green, Charles

Griffith, Alan Arnold

Handley Page, Sir Frederick

Heinkel, Ernst

Henson, William Samuel

Ilyushin, Sergei Vladimirovich

Johnson, Clarence Leonard

Junkers, Hugo

Korolov, Sergei Pavlovich

Langley, Samuel Pierpont

Lebaudy, Paul

Leonardo da Vinci

Levavasseur, Léon

Lilienthal, Otto

MacCready, Paul

Martin, Sir James

Maxim, Sir Hiram Stevens

Messerschmitt, Willi E.

Meusnier, Jean Baptiste Marie

Mignet, Henri

Mikoyan, Artem Ivanovich

Mitchell, Reginald Joseph

Montgolfier, Joseph-Michel

Oberth, Hermann Julius

Ohain, Hans Joachim Pabst von

Parseval, August von

Phillips, Horatio Frederick

Piccard, Auguste

Pierce, John Robinson

Pilcher, Percy Sinclair

Renard, Charles

Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

Roe, Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon

Rogallo, Francis Melvin

Santos-Dumont, Alberto

Saulnier, Raymond

Séguin, Louis

Short, Hugh Oswald

Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich

Sopwith, Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose

Stringfellow, John

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Tupolev, Andrei Nikolayevich

Voisin, Gabriel

Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander

Wenham, Francis Herbert

Whittle, Sir Frank

Wright, Wilbur

Yost, Paul Edward

Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After obtaining a degree in engineering, Fabre specialized in hydrodynamics. Around 1904 he developed an interest in flying and followed the progress of early French aviators such as Archdeacon, Voisin and Blériot who were experimenting with float-gliders. Fabre carried out many experiments during the following years, including airflow tests on various surfaces and hydrodynamic tests on different designs for floats. He also built a propeller-driven motor car to develop the most efficient design for a propeller. In 1909 he built his first "hydro-aeroplane", but it failed to fly. By March 1910 he built a new float plane which was very different from contemporary French aeroplanes. It was a tail-first (canard) monoplane and had unusual Warren girder spars exposed to the airstream. The engine was a conventional Gnome rotary mounted at the rear of the machine. On 28 March 1910 Fabre, who had no previous experience of flying, decided he was ready to test his hydro-aeroplane. First he made several straight runs to test the planing properties of his three floats, then he made several short hops. In the afternoon Fabre took off from the harbour at La Mède near Marseille before official witnesses: he was able to claim the first flight by a powered seaplane. His hydro-aeroplane is preserved in the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Paris.

Despite several accidents, Fabre continued to improve his design and in October of 1910 Glenn Curtiss, the American designer, visited Fabre to compare notes. A year later Curtiss built the first of his many successful seaplanes. Fabre did not continue as an aircraft designer, but he went on to design and manufacture floats for other people.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Griffith was very much a "boffin", for he was a quiet, thoughtful man who shunned public appearances, yet he produced many revolutionary ideas. During the First World War he worked at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough, where he carried out research into structural analysis. Because of his use of soap films in solving torsion problems, he was nicknamed "Soap-bubble".

During the 1920s Griffith carried out research into gas-turbine design at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE; as the Royal Aircraft Factory had become). In 1929 he made proposals for a gas turbine driving a propeller (a turboprop), but the idea was shelved. In the 1930s he was head of the Engine Department of the RAE and developed multi-stage axial compressors, which were later used in jet engines. This work attracted the attention of E.W. (later Lord) Hives of Rolls-Royce who persuaded Griffith to join Rolls-Royce in 1939. His first major project was a "contra-flow" jet engine, which was a good idea but a practical failure. However, Griffith's axial-flow compressor experience played an important part in the success of Rolls-Royce jet engines from the Avon onwards. He also proposed the bypass principle used for the Conway.

Griffith experimented with suction to control the boundary layer on wings, but his main interest in the 1950s centred on vertical-take-off and -landing aircraft. He developed the remarkable "flying bedstead", which consisted of a framework (the bedstead) in which two jet engines were mounted with their jets pointing downwards, thus lifting the machine vertically. It first flew in 1954 and provided much valuable data. The Short SC1 aircraft followed, with four small jets providing lift for vertical take-off and one conventional jet to provide forward propulsion. This flew successfully in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Griffith proposed an airliner with lifting engines, but the weight of the lifting engines when not in use would have been a serious handicap. He retired in 1960.

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