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Louis Blériot |
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Louis
Blériot was first attracted to the problem of flight when he visited
the 1900 Paris Exhibition and saw Clement Ader's strange bat-wing contraption,
the Avion No.III. As a result, he built his own bat-wing
aeroplane, but unlike Ader's his actually had flapping rather than
fixed wings. Unsurprisingly, it was not a success and flapped itself to
pieces on the ground. It was an inauspicious beginning for one of the great
airmen of history, but demonstrated perfectly his unscientific approach
to the subject. The historian Charles Gibbs-Smith saw the main difference between European and American experimenters as being a lack of scientific rigor among the Europeans. Blériot is a good example of this phenomenon. He impulsively jumped from one concept to another and, by retaining those characteristics that worked, he eventually found himself with a practical aeroplane. It was the philosophy of trial and error, and it was something of a miracle that Blériot survived the numerous early crashes that this method entailed. He always tested his own machines. By contrast, the Wrights exhaustively studied each aspect of flight individually and then brought their careful solutions together in one finished design. In
1905, Blériot became acquainted with Charles and Gabriel Voisin,
who had built several Wright-inspired gliders for prominent Aéro-Club
de France member Ernest Archdeacon. Their latest model was fitted with
floats for towing behind a motor boat on the River Seine. Louis Blériot
commissioned them to build a similar machine for himself. It had a wide
biplane tail, connected by side-curtains to form a boxkite
When the gliders met with no success, Blériot decided to pursue his own ideas once more. Unlike most other experimenters of the day, he was particularly attracted to the idea of the monoplane. After Santos-Dumont's successful flights of 1906 he knew flight was a real possibility, and thus encouraged he built a tail-first monoplane, influenced by Dumont's tail-first 14-bis. It was christened the Canard ('duck') because its long 'neck' stretched out in front like a duck in flight. (Since then, the term 'canard' has been used to describe any tail-first aeroplane.) Its wings were covered with varnished paper and it was powered by a 24 h.p. Antoinette. It was first tested at Bagatelle on 21 March 1907, and on 5 April Blériot made a flight of 5 to 6 yards (6 m.). He made further short hops at Issy on 8 and 15 April but the machine was basically too fragile and it was destroyed in a crash on 19 April, from which Blériot was lucky to escape.
After
the crash of 19 April, he abandoned the canard and built a plane along
the lines pioneered by the American, Professor Langley. It had two sets
of wings, the one behind the other, and was called the Libellule
('dragonfly'). The front set of wings had a form of aileron
Blériot's
third plane in one year was of a type that came to be the standard layout
for monoplanes up to the present day. That is to say the engine was at
the front near the wings, with the rudder and elevator at the rear on a
long tail. The main undercarriage wheels were under the engine and there
was a smaller wheel towards the tail. This was completely revolutionary
in 1907. But by inspired guesswork, Blériot had hit on a winning monoplane
formula. All his future aeroplane designs were variations on this theme.
The first of these ground-breaking machines was the sixth aeroplane Blériot
had built (including gliders) and so it was simply called No.VI.
It was doubly innovative because, in addition to its layout, it had a completely
covered fuselage and no external bracing
wires
In
the new year, 1908, Blériot built another, No.VII,
which similarly crashed, and then another, No.VIII, which
met the same fate. These planes were covered with rice paper to keep weight
to a minimum. Blériot's tenacity and enthusiasm sprang from his
"passion for the problems of aviation" - his own words for his devotion
to flying. And his persistance was paying off. His new machines
were generally better than their predecessors and in No.VIII he
flew for 800 yards (730 m.)at Issy. This machine had a 50 h.p. Antoinette,
and good controls, including large 'modern' ailerons on the trailing
edge
Apart from getting the shape of his aeroplanes right, another great achievement of Louis Blériot was in designing the modern control system. He linked the ailerons and elevator together so that they were both worked from a central 'joystick', while rudder control was via a bar at the pilot's feet. If Blériot wanted to climb, he pulled the stick back. If he wanted to yaw right, he pushed his right foot forward. If he wanted to bank left, he moved the stick left. This is exactly how modern control systems work. By contrast, the Wright brothers had linked their wing-warping (in place of ailerons) to the rudder. This was logical, but was not copied.
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