HISTORY
The
company was set up in 1911 as
Aéroplanes Deperdussin,
becoming the
Société
de Production des Aéroplanes
Deperdussin
in 1912. Its founder Armand
Deperdussin (born 1867) had been a
travelling salesman and a cabaret
singer in Liège and Brussels, before
making his fortune in the silk
business. Deperdussin became
fascinated by aviation in 1908, and
in 1909 he established an aircraft
works at Laon. Deperdussin himself
was not a designer, but he hired the
talented engineer Louis Béchereau
(1880–1970) as technical director.
Béchereau would be responsible for
Deperdussin and SPAD aircraft
designs thereafter.
The first
Deperdussin aircraft was an
unsuccessful canard, but their next
aircraft, the
Type A,
was an immediate success, and led to
a series of closely related
monoplanes. Similar to Louis
Blériot's Blériot XI, and the
Nieuport 4, this was a layout
popular with both military and
civilian clients in the period
before the First World War. The
Deperdussin TT was a considerable
export success, and 63 were built by
the Lebedev company in Russia. The
model was purchased in small numbers
by foreign clients, and Deperdussin
aircraft were also built at Highgate
in London by the
British
Deperdussin Company,
run by D Lawrence Santoni and John
Cyril Porte. From 1911
Deperdussin was produced their
aircraft from a new factory at
Grenelle in the suburbs of Paris.
They also established factories at
Le Havre and Juvisy to build motor
boats and waterplanes, as well as
three flying schools.
The
company also produced a number of
notable racing aircraft, including
the groundbreaking
Deperdussin Monocoque,
which won the 1912 and 1913 Gordon
Bennett Trophy races, set several
world speed records and was the
first airplane to exceed 200 km/h
(120 mph). The first Schneider
Trophy competition, held on 16 April
1913 at Monaco, was won by a
Deperdussin floatplane at an average
speed of 45.75 mph (about 73 km/h).
In 1913,
Armand Deperdussin was arrested on
charges of fraud. He had developed
expensive tastes, and, in addition
to funding competitions such as the
Gordon Bennett Cup, he entertained
lavishly. The trading arm of the
Comptoir Industrial et Colonial bank
claimed that he funded this by
fraudulently borrowing from them
using forged receipts from his silk
business as security. He
remained incarcerated until he was
brought to trial in 1917. Although
it was claimed that he used much of
the money to develop France's
aviation expertise, he was convicted
and sentenced to five years in
prison, but as a concession for
first offenders he was reprieved
("sursis") and released immediately.
Deperdussin never recovered from the
incident and committed suicide in
1924.
Source:
Wikipedia
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