Léon Bollée
Léon Bollée (born April 1, 1870 in Le Mans , † December 16, 1913 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a French automobile manufacturer , calculating machine designer and inventor . He is the son of the bell founder and automobile pioneer Amédée Bollée and brother of his other son Amédée Bollée junior.
The city's stadium, where UC Le Mans plays its first division football matches, is named after Léon Bollée .
The Institut International d'Informatique Léon Bollée in Ho Chi Minh City , the capital of Vietnam , is also named after him .
Calculating machines
In 1887, Bollée began to work on three different calculating machines - a direct multiplying calculating machine , a calculator and the arithmograph . Bollée was the first to succeed in constructing a direct multiplying calculating machine. With this he won a gold medal at the Paris exhibition in 1889. The system was patented in France, Belgium, Germany and Hungary.
Car designer and manufacturer
Bollée founded in 1895 in Le Mans , the company Automobiles Leon Bollee .
First, Léon Bollée constructed a tricycle that propelled the car via a drive belt using a single-cylinder engine. He called the car a voiturette . With this vehicle he repeated his father's drive from Le Mans to Paris, but in just seven hours, i.e. at an average speed of 30 km / h. Several hundred of this model were built and sold. Later he set a record on this route with an average speed of 60 km / h.
From 1899 he built a four-wheeled car, the license of which he gave to Darracq in 1901 .
Collaboration with the Wright Brothers
Wilbur Wright came to France in May 1908. The American flight reports were not believed at the time. After ten weeks of ridicule since the end of May 1908, the first flight in France was a satisfaction. The Flyer A was assembled in the Le Mans plant from May 1908 to August 1908 . Léon Bollée supported Wilbur Wright with his factory and his hospitality. The flight tests met with enthusiastic interest from the French public. First hundreds of people from the area, then thousands flocked to the flights. Celebrities also came, e.g. B. Queen Margherita of Italy , King Alfonso XIII. of Spain and King Edward VII of England. From the events of 1908 to 1909, Léon Bollèe shot 127 duotone photos. Wilbur died of typhus three years after his return to the United States . Léon died a year later. In 1920, when a memorial to Wilbur Wright was being erected in Le Mans, Léon's widow sent a photo album with Léon's pictures from that time to Wilbur's younger brother, Orville Wright .
The company after the death of Léon Bollée
The widow Bollée continued to run the company after Leon's death in 1913. But she sold it to the Morris Motor Company in 1925 ; the company was renamed Morris-Léon Bollée . The intent of the buyers was to circumvent French import restrictions and sell Morris models in France. Morris sold the company to a group of investors in 1931, who renamed it Societé Nouvelle Léon Bollée and continued production until 1933.
literature
- Stanley W. Kandebo, Dawne Dewey: Wilbur Wright's Flights in France: Leon Bollee's Photographic Record 1908-1909 , McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (August 15, 2003), ISBN 0-07-142739-2
Web links
- Picture of Léon Bollée in front of his adding machine and much more information about the adding machine in the computer dictionary
- Institut international d'informatique Léon Bollée in Ho Chi Minh City ( Vietnam )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Institut international d'informatique Léon Bollée ( Memento of the original of October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Ho Chi Minh City ( Vietnam )
- ^ IBM Archives, Léon Bollée's Arithmographe
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.amazon.com/Wilbur-Wrights-Flights-France-Photographic/dp/0071427392 See Editorial Review on the page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bollée, Léon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French automobile manufacturer and inventor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 1, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mans |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 16, 1913 |
| Place of death | Neuilly-sur-Seine |