Chanute octave

See also: Octave, Chanute

Octave Chanute was born on February 18th 1832 in Paris, and deceased in Chicago in 1910.

He is the son of Joseph Chanut, professor with the Collège de France, which is expatriate in the United States in 1839.

After having carried out a career of engineer in several companies of railroads and having acquired a certain abundance of cash, it is fixed at Chicago in 1889 when he becomes consulting engineer and is interested in aviation.

Having the gift of documentation and information, it gathers all the documents of which it intended to speak and undertakes to diffuse them. In 1894, it publishes Progress in Flying Machines (Progress in the flying machines), which ensures a great notoriety to him.

In 1896, he undertakes with Augustus Herring and William Avery the construction of a sailplane inspired by those of Otto Lilienthal. Estimating itself too old to try out itself, it engages three young assistances. In June, on the basis of the top of the sand hills which border the lake Michigan, close to Chicago, they test several models of sailplanes and, on July 4th, manage to traverse about thirty meters. Several hundreds of slips are carried out in 1896 and 1897 without any accident. The longest course is of 109 m with an angle of fall of 10 degrees.

It was an important bond between the American pioneers (in particular the Frères Wright, which flew with him) and Europeans (Ferber, Santos-Dumont etc). In 1903, it came to France to present the state of its work before the aeronautical international commission and the Flying-club of France and benefitted from it to meet Ferber in Nice.

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