Archdeacon

   The wealthy lawyer Ernest Archdeacon, long an enthusiast of mechanical speed, and one of the most eager and efficient proselytes for aeronautics, became interested in it in 1902; in 1903, with Renard, Herve, Drzwiecki, Tatin, Besancon, Balsan, Soreau, and Ferber, he founded the Aviation Committee of the Aero Club de France, and thus gave worldwide aviation a significant boost. It is less well known that he worked out the designs for 3 gliders, whose primary significance was that they helped launch the aviation career of Gabriel Voisin.
   In 1904 Archdeacon commissioned Dargent, a model-builder at Chalais-Meudon, to build a glider patterned on the Hargrave kites and the 1902 Wright. Both Gabriel Voisin, then a young art student from Lyon, and Captain Ferdinand Ferber, on leave from the French artillery, flew it in April 1904 at Merlimont on the Channel coast near the town of Berck-sur-mer: Voisin recalled making 34 "flights" in it. Covered with silk, it had no elevator and a single tail fin, but later underwent many modifications with a front elevator, tail fins, and skids.

   (Span: 7.5 m; wing area: 21.6 sqm; weight: 34 kg)
  
   By October 1904 Archdeacon had formed the Syndicat de l'Aeronautique with Girardot, Maas, Turgan, de Vogue and Loisel, and he commissioned Voisin to build a second glider, similar to the first, with tailplane and fins added for stability; the design resembled a stabilized Wright. Archdeacon thought the elevator would do better at the rear, and put it there.
   Voisin built the glider for the Syndicate at Levallois, north-west of Paris, in Turgan's workshop; it was tested there with twin propellers driven by an unsuccessful flat-twin 16 hp Turgan engine. The work was then transferred to the Etablissements Surcouf, later to become the Astra Company. Voisin wisely tested the glider unmanned, with a sandbag and no engine; on 26 March 1905 it was towed down a slipway by automobile at Issy-les-Moulineaux, the tail broke off, and the glider was demolished.

(Span: 9.6 m; length: 4.5 m; wing area: 27 sqm)


Voisin

   Any account of the work of the brothers Voisin must cope with the problem, greater with this firm than with any other, of the number of aeroplanes designed and built in part or in whole by the Voisins for other people whose names then became associated with the aircraft. The Voisins decided early on to accept work from others; these basically Voisin designs will appear in this section, though since some have become better known under their owners' names, they will be described more fully elsewhere.
   Born on 5 February 1880, Gabriel Voisin became early interested in things mechanical, and he and his brother Charles built some pieces at the machine shop in his father's gas-works. They built kites; and discovering Hargrave's work in Australia, developed several large box-kites, and by 1898 they became interested in flying machines, and tested gliders at Neuville au Saone. In 1899 they added a pair of bars under one of their big Hargrave-type kites and tried it several times, unsuccessfully, stopping the tests before attempting to launch Charles from a 60' cliff in a quarry. At the 1900 Paris Salon he met Ader and saw his Avion; inspired, he went on to study the work of Octave Chanute, and based on the American's trussed box structure, the brothers built another glider.

   Glider 1903: a biplane built of bamboo with cruciform tail copied from Chanute: this form was flown as a man-carrying kite, and the tail removed and replaced with the rear cell of their Hargrave kite. It was modified, or at least 2 and possibly 3 others were built in addition by 1908.

   (Span: 6.4 m; wing area: 18 sqm; empty weight: 24 kg)
  
   At Chalais-Meudon Voisin met Ernest Archdeacon and saw his Wright-based glider; Archdeacon asked Voisin to pilot it in 1904 at Berck-sur-Mer on the Channel coast, and subsequently to be the engineer in a new aeroplane-building firm, Le Syndicat d'Aviation. The gliders built by this firm are described under Archdeacon. One of the observers at the tow-testing from the Seine of the later Voisin-built Archdeacon glider was Louis Bleriot, who asked Voisin on the spot to build him a similar machine and become a partner in aeroplane-building; their first three products, Bleriots II, III, and IV, all unsuccessful, are described under Bleriot. After these failures the partnership was given up.