Bleriot, Louis

Date of birth: July 1, 1872.

Place of birth: Cambrai, France.

Died: August 2, 1936.

Major contributions: First person to fly across the English Channel; first person to fly with two passengers; developer of the system for controlling direction and elevation; director of a company that produced an important fighter plane of World War I.

Awards: Member of France’s Legion d’Honneur.

W

hen he was a young man, Louis Bleriot made a small fortune by manufacturing headlights for automobiles. He then became fascinated by aviation.

Early Attempts

Beginning in 1900, Bleriot tried various aircraft designs, including one with bat­like wings flapped by the engine, several biplanes (with two sets of wings), a monoplane (single wing), and a design that had one wing set behind another. All of these test planes crashed.

Bleriot returned to a single-wing design and developed an airplane-the Bleriot Vl-with a modern appearance. The engine was in front, with large wheels underneath. The rudder and ele­vator were in the rear, and a smaller wheel was mounted below the tail. The plane’s body was completely covered, and there were no support wires visible on the exterior.

Bleriot, Louis

О Louis Bleriot, shown here in his monoplane, was famous for his feat of flying the English Channel.

Bleriot flew the plane 240 feet (73 meters) before it crashed, and he decid­ed to perfect the design. As he tinkered, he developed a joystick to adjust eleva­tion and a bar under his feet to change direction. Similar systems are still used in aircraft today.

By 1909, Bleriot’s fortune was nearly gone, but he did not give up. Spurring him on was a large cash prize offered by the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, to the first person to fly across the English Channel (the stretch of water between England and France).