"gyroplane (the forerunner of the helicopter) with flexible wings. On 29 September 1907, it achieved the first ascent of a vertical-flight aircraft with a pilot, albeit only to a height of . It was also not a free flight, as four men were used to steady the structure. He built his first fixed-wing aircraft, the Breguet Type I, in 1909, flying it successfully before crashing it at the Grande Semaine d'Aviation held at Reims. In 1911, he founded the Société anonyme des ateliers d’aviation Louis Breguet. In 1912, Breguet constructed his first hydroplane. He is especially known for his development"
"with a parachute. On 26 December 1783, he jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France, in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a parachute with a rigid wooden frame. Between 1853 and 1854, Louis Charles Letur developed a parachute-glider comprising an umbrella-like parachute with smaller, triangular wings and vertical tail beneath. Letur died after it crashed in 1854. Kites are most notable in the recent history of aviation primarily for their man-carrying or man-lifting capabilities, although they have also been important in other areas such as meteorology. The Frenchman Gaston Biot developed a man-lifting"
"with the outbreak of World War II. The only prototype was destroyed in 1943 during an Allied air attack on the airfield at Villacoublay. Breguet-Dorand Gyroplane Laboratoire The Gyroplane Laboratoire was an early helicopter. Its designer, Frenchman Louis Breguet, had already experimented with rotorcraft in 1909; however, he chose to concentrate on airplanes until the end of the 1920s. In 1929 he announced a set of patents which addressed the flight stabilization of rotorcraft, and, in 1931, Breguet created the ""Syndicat d'Etudes de Gyroplane"" (French for ""Syndicate for Gyroplane Studies""), together with Rene Dorand as technical director. Their goal was"
"Breguet-Dorand Gyroplane Laboratoire The Gyroplane Laboratoire was an early helicopter. Its designer, Frenchman Louis Breguet, had already experimented with rotorcraft in 1909; however, he chose to concentrate on airplanes until the end of the 1920s. In 1929 he announced a set of patents which addressed the flight stabilization of rotorcraft, and, in 1931, Breguet created the ""Syndicat d'Etudes de Gyroplane"" (French for ""Syndicate for Gyroplane Studies""), together with Rene Dorand as technical director. Their goal was the development of an experimental helicopter, the Gyroplane Laboratoire. The aircraft consisted of an open steel tube framework, within which the engine, fuel tank,"
"would follow. In 1927 Nicolas Florine received financial support from the Belgian airline SNETA and the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique for the development of a helicopter. This resulted in three prototypes. The first was built in 1927 and made its first flight in 1929. Nicolas Florine built a helicopter with two rotors in tandem, turning in the same direction. To balance the reaction torques, he used his principle of inclining the axes of rotation of the rotors with respect to each other. After the implementation of scale models, one of which weighed 36 kg and left the ground"
"Wright brothers to pursue the dream of flight. In 1861, the word ""helicopter"" was coined by Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt, a French inventor who demonstrated a small steam-powered model. While celebrated as an innovative use of a new metal, aluminum, the model never lifted off the ground. D'Amecourt's linguistic contribution would survive to eventually describe the vertical flight he had envisioned. Steam power was popular with other inventors as well. In 1878 the Italian Enrico Forlanini's unmanned vehicle, also powered by a steam engine, rose to a height of , where it hovered for some 20 seconds after a vertical"
"filled balloon he had developed. In early 1784, the Flesselles balloon, named after the unfortunate Jacques de Flesselles, later to be an early casualty at the Bastille, gave a rough landing to its passengers. In June 1784, the Gustave (a hot air balloon christened La Gustave in honour of King Gustav III of Sweden's visit to Lyon ) saw the first (singing) female aeronaut, Élisabeth Thible. Both brothers invented a process to manufacture transparent paper looking like vellum, reproducing the technique of the English, followed by the papermakers Johannot and Réveillon. In 1796, Joseph Michel Montgolfier invented the first self-acting"
"in a balloon from Vauxhall (London) on 24 July 1837 to about 1500m. The parachute failed to open properly and Cocking was killed. The first military use of aircraft in Europe took place during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French used a tethered hydrogen balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian army during the Battle of Fleurus (1794). In 1811 Franz Leppich went to Napoleon and claimed that he could build a hydrogen balloon that would enable the French to attack from the air. Napoleon then ordered that he be removed from French Territory. In 1812 the secret"
"After initial ground testing, the de Bothezat machine made its first flight on 18 December 1922, piloted by Major T.H. Bane of the Engineering Division, and hovering to a height of . The propellers for lateral control were soon found useless, and removed, while its original Le Rhône engine proved underpowered and was replaced by a Bentley rotary type. Over the next year, over one hundred flights were made, carrying up to four passengers in addition to its pilot, and setting records for duration (2 minutes 45 seconds) and altitude () for helicopter flight. Although de Bothezat's invention was hailed"
"a gasoline engine with box kites attached to a mast by cables for a rotor, but it never flew. In 1906, two French brothers, Jacques and Louis Breguet, began experimenting with airfoils for helicopters. In 1907, those experiments resulted in the ""Gyroplane No.1"", possibly as the earliest known example of a quadcopter. Although there is some uncertainty about the date, sometime between 14 August and 29 September 1907, the Gyroplane No. 1 lifted its pilot into the air about for a minute. The Gyroplane No. 1 proved to be extremely unsteady and required a man at each corner of the"
"de la Muette, near the Bois de Boulogne. The invention of the balloon led directly to the invention of the parachute. André-Jacques Garnerin, who had flown in a Montgolfier balloon in 1790, wanted to find a vehicle by which a pilot could abandon a balloon in case of an accident. On 22 October 1797 he made the first descent with a frameless silk parachute, dropping from a balloon seven hundred meters above Parc Monceau. On 10 November 1798 his future wife, Jeanne-Genevieve Labrousse, became the first woman to ascend alone in a balloon, and the first woman to make a"
"take-off. Emmanuel Dieuaide's steam-powered design featured counter-rotating rotors powered through a hose from a boiler on the ground. In 1887 Parisian inventor, Gustave Trouvé, built and flew a tethered electric model helicopter. In July 1901, the maiden flight of Hermann Ganswindt's helicopter took place in Berlin-Schöneberg; this was probably the first motor-driven flight carrying humans. A movie covering the event was taken by Max Skladanowsky, but it remains lost. In 1885, Thomas Edison was given US$1,000 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., to conduct experiments towards developing flight. Edison built a helicopter and used the paper for a stock ticker to"
"Breguet G.11E The Breguet G.11E was a French passenger coaxial rotors helicopter flown soon after World War II. Only one was built, development ceasing when funding ran out. Louis Breguet designed his first helicopter, the Breguet-Richet Gyroplane, in 1908 but his 1935 Gyroplane Laboratoire was much more successful. It had no tail rotor but instead had co-axial contra-rotating rotors. After World War II Breguet was approached by the ""Société Francaises du Gyroplane"" (SFG, ) for a helicopter capable of carrying several passengers. Breguet developed his wartime studies of a project named the G.34 into the two-passenger Breguet G.11E, otherwise known"
"the Astronomical Society of France. He then embarked on developing inventions and in 1887, he designed and made a rangefinder, then in 1888 a small captive helicopter powered by an electric motor attached to a battery on the ground. In 1889 he began experimenting with heavier than air aviation: small airplanes propelled by rockets or kites used as a means of traction, on water or on ice. On August 17, 1889, he made his first flight in an untethered balloon and, with his friend Georges Besançon, in 1889 built the ""Sirius"" in which they made a trip from Paris to"
"the French Navy. Because of a hip disease he walked with the aid of crutches and so was unable to attend the Naval School. At 20, he began studying aviation and joined the newly founded ""Société Aéronautique de France"". He became vice-president of the Society in 1876 and participated in the publication of the journal ""L'Aéronaute"". In 1870 Pénaud made the first of a series of successful model helicopters. The principle of this was not new, having been demonstrated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1784 by M. Launoy, a naturalist, and M. Bienvenu, and was known by Sir"
"lifetime, including the first ascent on horseback on 16 October 1798 from Bellevue Park in Paris. He and his horse made more than fifty of these documented flights. Pierre Testu-Brissy Pierre Testu-Brissy (1770? – 1829) was a pioneering French balloonist who achieved fame for making many flights astride animals, particularly horses. Testu-Brissy made his first balloon ascent in 1785, and the first night ascent on 18 June 1786 in a hydrogen balloon. He made the world's first electrical observations on 18 June 1786 as he ascended into thunderclouds, and said that he drew remarkable discharges from the clouds by means"
"Pierre Testu-Brissy Pierre Testu-Brissy (1770? – 1829) was a pioneering French balloonist who achieved fame for making many flights astride animals, particularly horses. Testu-Brissy made his first balloon ascent in 1785, and the first night ascent on 18 June 1786 in a hydrogen balloon. He made the world's first electrical observations on 18 June 1786 as he ascended into thunderclouds, and said that he drew remarkable discharges from the clouds by means of an iron rod, carried in the car. Testu-Brissy's first solo ascent was on 18 September 1791 from Paris. He subsequently undertook more than 50 flights in his"
"exhibition number 19, at the Grande Semaine d'Aviation in August, but crashed when the machine was caught in a gust of wind . Breguet himself was unharmed. Breguet Type I The Breguet Type I was an experimental aircraft built in France in 1909. It was Louis Breguet's first fixed-wing aircraft design. Breguet had previously had some success with two helicopter designs, one of which had been exhibited at the Paris Aero Salon in December 1908. Because of these machines, the Type I was at first known as the Breguet Type III. The Breguet Type 1 differed from most biplane designs"
"1933, and attained an altitude of and an endurance of eight minutes. Florine chose a co-rotating configuration because the gyroscopic stability of the rotors would not cancel. Therefore, the rotors had to be tilted slightly in opposite directions to counter torque. Using hingeless rotors and co-rotation also minimised the stress on the hull. At the time, it was one of the most stable helicopters in existence. The Bréguet-Dorand ""Gyroplane Laboratoire"" was built in 1933. It was a coaxial helicopter, contra-rotating. After many ground tests and an accident, it first took flight on 26 June 1935. Within a short time, the"
"condensed. Mistaking smoke for a kind of steam, they began filling their balloons with hot smoky air which they called ""electric smoke"". Despite not fully understanding the principles at work they made some successful launches and in December 1782 flew a balloon to a height of . The French Académie des Sciences soon invited them to Paris to give a demonstration. Meanwhile, the discovery of hydrogen led Joseph Black to propose its use as a lifting gas in about 1780, though practical demonstration awaited a gastight balloon material. On hearing of the Montgolfier Brothers' invitation, the French Academy member Jacques"
"Montgolfier brothers gave their first public demonstration of their invention on June 4, 1783. After experimenting with unmanned balloons and flights with animals, the first ""tethered"" balloon flight with humans on board took place on October 19, 1783 with the scientist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, the manufacture manager, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and Giroud de Villette, at the ""Folie Titon"" in Paris. The first untethered, ""free"" flight with human passengers was on 21 November 1783. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but de Rozier, along with the Marquis François d'Arlandes, successfully petitioned for the"
"De Bothezat helicopter The de Bothezat helicopter, also known as the Jerome-de Bothezat Flying Octopus, was an experimental quadrotor helicopter built for the United States Army Air Service by George de Bothezat in the early 1920s, and was said at the time to be the first successful helicopter. Although its four massive six-bladed rotors allowed the craft to successfully fly, it suffered from complexity, control difficulties, and high pilot workload, and was reportedly only capable of forward flight in a favorable wind. The Army canceled the program in 1924, and the aircraft was scrapped. Self-described as ""the world's greatest scientist"
"Breguet Type I The Breguet Type I was an experimental aircraft built in France in 1909. It was Louis Breguet's first fixed-wing aircraft design. Breguet had previously had some success with two helicopter designs, one of which had been exhibited at the Paris Aero Salon in December 1908. Because of these machines, the Type I was at first known as the Breguet Type III. The Breguet Type 1 differed from most biplane designs of the time by being of tractor configuration and not having a forward elevator, as used by the Wright Brothers and Gabriel Voisin, and in using a"
"Technology and the Columbia University. In 1921, the US Army Air Service hired de Bothezat to build a prototype helicopter. The quadrotor helicopter, known simply as the de Bothezat helicopter, was built by de Bothezat and Ivan Jerome in the hangars of Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio. The first flight turned out to be surprisingly successful for a machine that had been built without prototyping. In 1922, their ""flying octopus"" flew many times, although slowly and at low altitudes. In fact, its horizontal motion was induced by wind more than by the pilot's controls. He was granted US Patent number"
"was demonstrated at College Park, Maryland to the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics on June 16, 1922, and is often given (though disputed) as the debut of the helicopter. In 1923, Henry added a triple set of wings to his prototype, as a backup in case of engine failure. This machine could both hover, and reach forward speeds of 40 mph, but did not have the power to gain much altitude; its best performance, on February 23, 1924, reached an elevation of just 15 feet. A 1925 biplane-like design was lighter and more efficient, but performed little better and was"
"to take-off under its own power, in 1857. There are however competing claims for the first ""assisted"" powered flight, with John Stringfellow's experiments in 1848. Félix du Temple patented the designs for his aerial machine in 1857, which incorporated a retractable wheel landing gear, a propeller, a 6 hp engine and a dihedral wing design, under the title ""Locomotion aérienne par imitation du vol des oiseaux"" (""Aerial locomotion by imitation of the flight of birds""). He built several large models together with his brother Luis. One of them, weighing 700 grams, was able to fly, first using a clockwork mechanism"
"at Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis), and another, close to the location of the initial flight, at Marseille Provence Airport in Marignane (Bouches-du-Rhône). Fabre Hydravion Fabre Hydravion is the name used in English-language sources for an originally unnamed experimental floatplane designed by Henri Fabre. The aircraft is notable as the first to take off from water under its own power. Hydravion (French for seaplane/floatplane) was developed over a period of four years by Fabre, assisted by a former mechanic of Captain Ferdinand Ferber, named Marius Burdin, and Léon Sebille, a naval architect from Marseilles. Fabre did not initially name his machine, which in"
"from a hot-air balloon. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later claimed to have had the opportunity to try it himself in 1793 when his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to descend (this event was not witnessed by others). Subsequent development of the parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of linen stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded silk, taking advantage of silk's strength and light weight. In 1797, André Garnerin made the"
"height of . On 4 May, Oehmichen set the first 1 km closed-circuit helicopter flight in 7 minutes 40 seconds with his No. 2 machine. In the US, George de Bothezat built the quadrotor helicopter de Bothezat helicopter for the United States Army Air Service but the Army cancelled the program in 1924, and the aircraft was scrapped. Albert Gillis von Baumhauer, a Dutch aeronautical engineer, began studying rotorcraft design in 1923. His first prototype ""flew"" (""hopped"" and hovered in reality) on 24 September 1925, with Dutch Army-Air arm Captain Floris Albert van Heijst at the controls. The controls that"
"Albert Museum in London. A c. 1560 picture by Pieter Breughel the Elder at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna depicts a helicopter top with three airscrews. ""The helicopter top in China led to nothing but amusement and pleasure, but fourteen hundred years later it was to be one of the key elements in the birth of modern aeronautics in the West."" Early Western scientists developed flying machines based upon the original Chinese model. The Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov developed a spring-driven coaxial rotor in 1743, and the French naturalist Christian de Launoy created a bow drill device with contra-rotating feather"
"and the fuselage lengthened by to include two more seats so that four passengers could be carried. Empty and maximum weights increased to and respectively. The G.111 began flight tests in 1951 but these were not completed as SFG were declared bankrupt the following year. Breguet G.11E The Breguet G.11E was a French passenger coaxial rotors helicopter flown soon after World War II. Only one was built, development ceasing when funding ran out. Louis Breguet designed his first helicopter, the Breguet-Richet Gyroplane, in 1908 but his 1935 Gyroplane Laboratoire was much more successful. It had no tail rotor but instead"
"to push the craft forward. The British aircraft and marine engineering company Saunders-Roe built the first practical human-carrying hovercraft for the National Research Development Corporation, the SR.N1, which carried out several test programmes in 1959 to 1961 (the first public demonstration was in 1959), including a cross-channel test run in July 1959, piloted by Peter ""Sheepy"" Lamb, an ex-naval test pilot and the chief test pilot at Saunders Roe. Christopher Cockerell was on board, and the flight took place on the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's first aerial crossing. The SR.N1 was powered by a single piston engine, driven by"
"Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague in September 1791. Following the invention of the modern parachute in 1783 by Sébastien Lenormand in France, in 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of jumping safely from a hot air balloon. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later had the opportunity to try it himself when in 1793 his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to escape. Subsequent development of the parachute focussed on making it more compact. While the early parachutes were made of linen stretched"