L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
Ader
Clement Ader was born in Muret, near Toulouse, on 2 April 1841, and by 1855 he was already experimenting with gliding, using a big overcoat for his wings. In 1867 he patented a bicycle with rubber tires, and in 1873 he was back to gliding, this time with a big bird-shaped machine with an articulated 10-meter wing covered with goose-feathers. He tethered it to the ground at its center of gravity, got inside it, and controlled its ascents and descents in a moderate wind. From then until about 1910 he was busy with electric devices, especially in connection with the telephone. But in 1882 he began to work again on the problem of flight, and undertook the construction of his first powered machine.
Avion I. Eole: The pilot was seated inside the enclosed hull behind the boiler of a 20 hp steam engine of Ader's own design driving a 4-bladed propeller whose blades were shaped like feathers. There was no elevator, probably no rudder, and no flight controls other than a device for swinging each bat-shaped wing differentially to shift the center of pressure, another for varying wing area on each side, a third to vary the camber, and a fourth to raise and lower each wing. In addition to the engine controls, the pilot was faced with 6 separate wheel controls and a pair of foot pedals. The Eole was to run on caterpillar tracks whose design was borrowed from Ader's earlier "Rail-without-End" trailer-truck invention, but it was in fact built with 3 wheels.
On 9 October 1890 it was tested at Armanvilliers, making the first powered take-off in history, starting on level ground and covering about 165 m at a height of about 20 cm: in 1906 Ader was to refer in his book La Premiere Etape de I 'Aviation Militaire to this occurrence as "ce petit evenement," and made no claims for it as a significant flight. In 1891 the boiler was rebuilt, and Ader later claimed to have made a real flight of 800 m at Satory - though later he was unable to recall the exact date, nor was the test referred to in any contemporary correspondence between Ader and the military - nor indeed in Ader's own account of the Eole, written in 1893.
(Span: 13.7 m; length: 4.6 m; wing area: 29.2 sqm; empty weight: 167 kg; gross weight: 298 kg)
Avion II: The French Ministry of War commissioned Ader to build a second machine, and he began building both the structure and the steam engine for Avion II in June 1893. He then calculated the torque of the 3-meter diameter 4-bladed propeller and frightened himself; he abandoned Avion II on the spot and undertook a new design.
A.Andrews. The Flying Machine: Its Evolution through the Ages (Putnam)
Contemporarily with Mozhaiski the very accomplished French electrical engineer Clement Ader, who had acquired an early fortune from developing telephone equipment but had a private passion for aeronautics, began to construct a powered aeroplane. He chose steam as his medium, and designed a very efficient light engine. He installed this in a striking bat-winged monoplane, which he named Eole, and personally piloted it in a historic test at Armainvilliers in 1890. Witnesses said that it took off from level ground and was airborne for some 50m, but not even Ader then claimed that this very creditable powered take-off was a sustained flight. Sixteen years later he alleged that he had made a further flight of 100m in Eole in 1891, but this claim has been authoritatively refuted.