Louis Charles Joseph Blériot( 1 July 1872 – 1 August 1936) was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for trucks and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. In 1909 he became world famous for making the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft, winning the prize of £ 1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. The founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company. Blériot had become interested in aviation while at the Ecole Centrale, but his serious experimentation was probably sparked by seeing Clément Ader’ s Avion III at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. By then his headlamp business was doing well enough for Blériot to be able to devote both time and money to experimentation. His first experiments were with a series of ornithopters, which were unsuccessful. In April 1905, Blériot met Gabriel Voisin, then employed by Ernest Archdeacon to
assist with his experimental gliders. Blériot was a spectator at Voisin’ s first trials of the floatplane glider he had built on 8 June 1905. Cine photography was among Blériot’ s hobbies, and the film footage of this flight was shot by him. The success of these trials prompted him to commission a similar machine from Voisin, the Blériot II glider. On 18 July an attempt to fly this aircraft was made, ending in a crash in which Voisin nearly drowned, but this did not deter Blériot. Indeed, he suggested that Voisin should stop working for Archdeacon and enter into partnership with him. Voisin accepted the proposal, and the two men established the Ateliers d’ Aviation Edouard Surcouf, Blériot et Voisin. Active between 1905 and 1906, the company built two unsuccessful powered aircraft, the Blériot III and the Blériot IV, largely a rebuild of its predecessor. Both these aircraft were powered with the lightweight Antoinette engines being developed by Léon Levavasseur. Blériot became a shareholder in the company, and in May 1906, joined the board of directors. The Blériot IV was damaged in a taxiing accident at Bagatelle on 12 November 1906. The disappointment of the failure of his aircraft was compounded by the success of Alberto Santos Dumont later that day, when he managed to fly his 14-bis a distance of 220 metres( 720 ft), winning the Aéro Club de France prize for the first flight of over 100
metres. This also took place at Bagatelle, and was witnessed by Blériot. The partnership with Voisin was dissolved and Blériot established his own business, Recherches Aéronautiques Louis Blériot, where he started creating his own aircraft, experimenting with various configurations and eventually creating the world’ s first successful powered monoplane. The first of these, the canard configuration Blériot V, was first tried on 21 March 1907, when Blériot limited his experiments to ground runs, which resulted in damage to the undercarriage. Two further ground trials, also damaging the aircraft, were undertaken, followed by another attempt on 5 April. The flight was only of around 6 m( 20 ft), after which he cut his engine and landed, slightly damaging the undercarriage. More trials followed, the last on 19 April when, travelling at a speed of around 50 kph( 30 mph), the aircraft left the ground, Blériot over-responded when the nose began to rise, and the machine hit the ground nose – first, and somersaulted. The aircraft was largely destroyed, but Blériot was, by great good fortune, unhurt. The engine of the aircraft was immediately behind his seat, and he was very lucky not to have been crushed by it. This was followed by the Blériot VI, a tandem wing design, first tested on 7 July, when the aircraft failed to lift off. Blériot then enlarged the wings slightly,
20 | FlyUAA | www. FlyUAA. org | November Issue