HISTORY
Louis Blériot was
an engineer who had developed the
first practical headlamp for cars
and had established a successful
business marketing them. In 1901 he
had built a small unmanned
ornithopter, but his serious
involvement with aviation began in
April 1905 when he witnessed Gabriel
Voisin's first experiments with a
floatplane glider towed behind a
motorboat on the river Seine. A
brief partnership with Voisin
followed, but after the failure of
the Blériot III and its modified
version, the Blériot IV, the
partnership was dissolved and
Blériot set up his own company,
"Recherches Aéronautique Louis
Blériot" (Louis Blériot Aeronautical
Research).
Unlike the business started
by Gabriel Voisin, which was
a straightforward design and
manufacturing concern with
Voisin acting as aircraft
designer, Bleriot's
establishment was, as its
name suggests, essentially a
privately funded research
establishment, employing
various engineers and
designers.
Owing to this it is
difficult to establish the
extent of Blériot's
involvement in the actual
design of the aircraft which
bear his name. Over the next
few years a series of
aircraft of varying
configurations were
produced, each one
marginally more successful
than its predecessor, and
culminating in the Type XI
with which he became famous
for being the first to fly
across the English Channel
in 1909.
In
1922 Blériot Aéronautique,
which had been a private
company became a
limited-liability company,
Blériot Aéronautique S.A..
Although a single company,
aircraft were produced using
both the Blériot and SPAD
names, the former generally
being used for the larger
multi-engined aircraft,
while the smaller
single-engined aircraft bore
the SPAD name, and it was
these that were most
successful.
The
only aircraft produced under
the Blériot name to be
produced in any quantity was
the Type 127, initially
designed in 1925 as the Type
117 escort fighter, and
later adapted to become a
bomber. 42 examples were
bought by the French air
force.
The last aircraft built
under the Blériot name was a
large flying boat designed
in response to a French Air
Ministry requirement for an
aircraft for a transatlantic
mail service between Dakar
and Natal in Brazil. The
resulting aircraft, the
Blériot 5190 first flew in
August 1933, and this
prototype, named the
Santos-Dumont
proved highly successful,
and a number of passenger
carrying variants were
planned. In May 1935, after
it had completed its twelfth
Atlantic crossing, the
French government ordered
three more examples, only to
cancel the order six weeks
later.
In
October 1936 the French
government nationalized all
manufacturers engaged in the
production of military
aircraft, including Blériot
Aéronautique.
Source:
Wikipedia
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