Blériot, Louis

Blériot, Louis (1872-1936), French engineer and pioneer aviator, born in Cambrai, in northern France. Having made his fortune designing and manufacturing acetylene car headlamps, Blériot turned to aviation during 1900-1902, when he made unsuccessful model flapping-wing aeroplanes. In 1905 he tested his Blériot II float-glider unsuccessfully, towing it with a motorboat on the River Seine. A series of experimental powered aeroplanes of various layouts followed, all of which Blériot tested himself, surviving many mishaps. His first short flights were made in the tandem-wing No.VI during 1905-1906, but his No.VII monoplane of 1907 proved little better. Success came with the No.VIII, in which Blériot was able to make fully controlled circling flights in the latter half of 1908. The next two machines were failures, but after seeing Wilbur Wright‘s demonstrations in France he adopted wing-warping instead of ailerons for lateral control in the No.XI, largely the work of the young engineer Raymond Saulnier. It was in this machine that Blériot flew from Calais to Dover on July 25, 1909, becoming the first aviator to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. Orders flooded in for his aeroplanes, and his company thrived through World War I and in the inter-war years, producing both military and civil aircraft.