Louis Blériot
Louis Charles Joseph Blériot (born July 1, 1872 in Cambrai , † August 2, 1936 in Paris ) was a French aviation pioneer . On July 25, 1909, he was the first person to cross the English Channel in an airplane with the Blériot XI . His flight from Calais to Dover took 37 minutes at an average altitude of 100 meters.
Life
After completing his engineering studies at the École Centrale Paris in 1895, Blériot first manufactured car headlights in a small company he founded. But he had always devoted himself to flying. Like many other aviation pioneers, he began - from 1900 - with the construction of so-called ornithopters , constructions in which the flapping of the wings of birds was imitated. In the airplane workshop he founded, he manufactured gliders, later also double-decker aircraft and, from 1906, single-deck motorized aircraft. Compared to other aircraft pioneers, such as the Wright brothers , Blériot's attempts were relatively haphazard. This was reflected in various failed constructions.
For a while, Blériot worked with Gabriel Voisin , another French aircraft pioneer. Some flying machines were designed, but they were not very successful. Different views on aircraft construction led to the end of the cooperation in 1908. Voisin did not see the future of the airplane in the monoplane . Blériot disagreed and developed aircraft in this design. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, the eleventh of his designs, which he brought into the air without an accident, was the monoplane Blériot XI, a device that had remarkable flight performance for the time.
After his historic flight across the English Channel on July 25, 1909, Blériot dedicated strengthened the serial construction of aircraft, aimed at Buc an own airfield one, opened flight schools and a production plant in England. In 1914 he acquired the French aircraft company Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin , the Société Pour les Appareils Deperdussin , and renamed the relatively well-known company Société Pour l´Aviation et ses Dérives , so that the initials were retained. The SPAD fighter planes were well known and successful during the First World War .
After the First World War, Blériot founded a new company, the Blériot Aéronautique , which, in addition to a few relatively insignificant bombers, which were mostly out of date in terms of design, mainly produced commercial aircraft. Until his death in August 1936, Blériot was closely associated with aviation. Less than a year after his death, French aviation companies were nationalized and merged to form the Société nationale des constructions aéronautiques du sud-ouest .
Flight over the English Channel
On July 25, 1909, Blériot was the first person to cross the English Channel in an airplane with the Blériot XI, which he designed himself . He needed 37 minutes for the 35 km long route from Calais to Dover, which results in an average speed of around 57 km / h. The average altitude was 100 meters. His competitor Hubert Latham had sunk in the water with his Antoinette IV during his attempt to cross on July 19, 1909 after 13 kilometers due to engine problems .
Blériot was able to accept the prize of 1,000 pounds sterling , which is the equivalent of around 100,000 euros today, offered by the English newspaper Daily Mail for the first canal crossing . This also solved his financial problems as he had invested practically all of his fortune, including that of his wife Alicia, whom he had married in 1901, in his constructions.
On this flight, Blériot received more than a hundred orders for the Type XI, and a total of around 800 were ultimately produced. Blériot thus became the first commercial aircraft manufacturer . He was later referred to as the "father of the modern monoplane".
Others
The painter Robert Delaunay dedicated his painting “Hommage à Blériot” to the aviation pioneer in 1914 .
Exactly 100 years to the day after Blériot first crossed the English Channel on July 25, 1909, the French Edmond Salis repeated the adventure in a true-to-original replica of the famous machine. It took a few minutes longer than Louis Blériot at the time, but the landing gear of his aircraft survived the landing without damage.
The plane with which Blériot made his flight across the English Channel in 1909 is in the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris ; the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire reports that it was brought here “in a triumphal procession” through the city.
The Blériot Glacier in Antarctica is named in his honor .
gallery
Louis Blériot (1872–1936) in his plane over the English Channel
The Blériot plane
Mikael Carlson and his Bleriot XI
Mikael Carlson and his Bleriot XI
Depiction of the canal overflight on a water tower near Calais
The Bleriot Monument in Cambrai (Nord-Pas-De-Calais)
SA par Actions "Airplane" share dated June 1, 1912; pictured is Louis Blériot with his "Blériot VIII"
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literature
- Günter Schmitt, Werner Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation. Special edition. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7 .
Web links
- Newspaper article about Louis Blériot in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barbara Walsh: Forgotten Aviator Hubert Latham: A high-flying gentleman . The History Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7524-4318-8 , pp. 93 ff .
- ↑ Hans Braun: Historical stocks from Europe . Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz, 1992, ISBN 3-87439-396-8 , p. 90 f .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Blériot, Louis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Blériot, Louis Charles Joseph (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French aviation pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 1, 1872 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cambrai |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 2, 1936 |
| Place of death | Paris |