AVIATION IN FRANCE IN 1908.« 



By Pierre-Roger Jourdain, 

 Member of the Aero Cliid of France, General Secretary of the Aero Club of Vichy. 



The science of aviation may be said to have originated with the 

 French. It is not a new science. As far back as 1742 there is authentic 

 record of mechanical flight by man. In that year the Marquis of 

 Bacqueville, 60 years old, hurled himself from his house top, glided 

 a distance of 300 meters, and landed unceremoniously on a laundry 

 boat moored along the banks of the Seine. Later came the isolated 

 experiments by Blanchard (1753-1809) and by Degen, and aviation 

 was for the time forgotten. 



Henson, in 1843, and Du Temple, in 1857, constructed the first fly- 

 ing machines of rational design. These embodied in embryo the main 

 features of some of our present machines, yet nothing was accom- 

 plished with either of them. 



Then came the profitable agitation of the subject aroused in 1863 

 by Naclar, who, reljdng on the experiments of Ponton d'Amecourt 

 and of Lalandelle, revolutionized European ideas by his well-known 

 exposition of the science of aerial navigation. Nadar pointed out 

 that up to that time the balloon must be held responsible for the 

 lack of progress in mechanical flight, and that to actually Hy it was 

 essential that the apparatus be heavier than air. In his researches he 

 had the support of M. Babinet, member of the institute. Then avia- 

 tion again dropped from public notice. Although forgotten by the 

 public, several investigators, among them Penaud, de Villeneuve, 

 Tatin, and Marey, w^ere conducting the first series of scientific studies 

 on the flight of birds, which are still consulted with profit. Finally 



^ Conference under the auspices of the association of former pupils of the 

 Faculty of Sciences of Paris, in the large amphitheater of the Sorbonne, Decem- 

 ber 19, 1908, M. Appell presiding. Translated, with permission, from the Revue 

 Scientifique, Paris., February 13, 1909. 



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