Nieuport

   The first company founded by Edouard Nieuport, formerly de Nieport, was a small firm producing spark-plugs and magnetos for automobile engines. Early interested in heavier-than-air flying machines, he also furnished some of the electrical equipment for the Antoinette engine fitted to Henry Farman's Voisin when it flew on 13 January 1908, the year in which he founded his first - and unsuccessful - aeronautical company. From his racing cycle experience, he was interested from the beginning in streamlined shapes. At first he thought aviation could be nothing but a sport, and he sought always for speed.
   At the end of 1908 he built his first aeroplane, with the help of his brother Charles, the Swiss Jacques Schneider, and his grandparents' money. His monoplane, powered with a 20 hp 2-cylinder watercooled Darracq, had an abbreviated deep fuselage which almost completely protected the pilot from the airflow. The tail was supported on outriggers. Completed and flown in 1909, it was destroyed by a Seine flood.