Clement Ader

Biography

Years of training

Clément Agnès Ader was born with Muret the April 2nd 1841 from François Ader (January 30th 1812 - January 14th 1889) and from his second wife, Antoinette Forthané (March 8th 1816 - November 6th 1865). Ader are turned towards joinery since several generations. The back grandfather of Clement was Menuisier and Architecte. It was illustrated in the repair of the church of OX, a few kilometres from Low wall. His/her maternal grandfather who was used in the armies as Napoleon Ier, lived with his wife in a Moulin, whose mechanism enchanted the small Clement a long time. He often came to look at it, while listening to the accounts of countryside of his grandfather. These are surely the stories which insufflated with the young child the patriotism which never left it during all its life.

Ader father hoped much that Clément succeeded to him the head of the family Menuiserie. But it wished before all the happiness of his only son. Also, when the Instituteur of Low wall advised to him to send Clément to Toulouse to follow secondary studies, he resigned himself. His/her son left in October 1853, at the 12 years age, like boarder of the Assiot institution.

He obtained his baccalaureat at 15 years. He was considered by his professors as “a very serious pupil, particularly gifted in Mathématiques and Dessin”.

In 1857 opens a new section in the establishment: an industrial school bringing a diploma of Engineer equivalent to the Arts and Métiers. Ader belongs to the first promotion, from where it will leave graduate in 1861. It is thought that it began the entrance examinations at the Universities, but either did not pass them by taste, or failed, that which one can doubt. Its finished studies, it was put in search of a stable situation.

It starts by working with the Compagnie of the railroads of the South, where it imagines a machine to pose the Rail S, which was used during tens of years. Then it launches out in the manufacture of Vélocipède S. Its idea to stick a band of rubber on the Roue S and to use a hollow framework gives him a great success as much sporting than commercial. Unfortunately, the Guerre of 1870 ruins it. It goes up to Paris to try there to make fortune and carry out its projects.

The telephone

In Paris, Ader needs money to make as much live the family which it founded that to concretize its project of heavier than the air. Interested by the incipient telephone, it improves the system of Graham Bell and starts to market it in Paris. He invents also the Théatrophone, phone network connected to the opera of Paris and which makes it possible to listen to the opera while remaining at home. The first, it imagines to join together by a handle the microphone and the ear-phone, thus inventing the telephone headset . In little time, it accumulates a great fortune and multiplies the influential contacts within the government. It will make use of these resources to place its project near the ministry for the War: Éole.

“The heaviest than the air”

Clement Ader, inventive fertile (caterpillars of tank S, stereophonic transmission or “théatrophone”, the underwater Cable, the Hovercraft, the Driving V8) and father of the modern Aviation, devoted most of his life to the realization of a dream of enfant : flight of heavier than the Air.

One finds traces of his research on the subject as of the first years of study. During the War of 1870, it is employed as scientist and tries without success to carry out a Cerf-volant able to carry a man.

Its studies on the flight of the Vautour S, carried out in Algérie make him discover the curve of Sustentation which makes it possible a wing to be pressed on the air. This discovery leads it to build, first of all, a Planeur in feathers of Oie, which one can see elements in some Photographie S of his friend Nadar. One is unaware of if Ader really flew with this sailplane but of the studies led to the Musée of the air of Le Bourget would tend to think that this machine was already able to rise in the airs.

Thereafter, having convinced the minister of the War to finance his work, thanks to secret funds, Ader developed prototypes whose forms were inspired by practical considerations more than of a final choice: Ader estimated that it was easier to regulate a wing of Chauve mouse than a wing of Oiseau, but that once the controlled flight, a rigid wing inspired by that of the birds would be more effective and more solid. It was the first to design a machine not trying to reproduce the beat of the wings of bird but to adopt the concept of fixed aerofoil.

With the head of a team of study financed by the secret funds of the republic, it produced three apparatuses: the Éole (the Plane), the Zephyr (Ader Plane II, ever finished) and the North wind (Ader Plane III) between 1890 and 1897.

First experimental flights

Its first flight on 50 meters with 20 cm of the ground would have taken place the October 9th 1890 in the park of the Château of Gretz-Armainvilliers, in the east of Paris, the orders of Éole. This experimentation was financed by the baron Péreire, an important banker who inter alia had taken part in the real estate transactions related to the modernization of Paris directed by the Haussmann prefect.

Interested by the project, the Army contacts Ader, which accomplishes a second flight on board Éole in September 1891. The apparatus positively impresses the soldiers who order from Ader a second more powerful apparatus. Ader then begins the construction of a second apparatus, evolution of the first but presenting similarities with Éole: the apparatus is single-engined aircraft twin-cylinder with extra-light vapor of 20 ch and 35 kg.

Plane II (Zephyr) is not completed, but is used as a basis for Plane III (North wind) which is a twin-engine making it possible to eliminate the problems of instability of Éole, which were due to the effects of couple of the simple propeller and which can embark an observer in addition to the pilot, on request of the Army.

Plane III accomplishes a flight of 300 meters before a military committee the October 14th 1897 with Satory. This flight being unrolled under very bad weather conditions, Plane III is damaged at the time of its landing. The ministry for the War ceases financing Ader, which is constrained to stop the construction of its prototypes (Éole had cost 200 000 francs of the time, is nearly 8 million Euro S). It then tries to give its fabulous steam engine to the captain Renard, which works on the navigation of the Dirigeable S, then launches out in the manufacture of the spark-ignition engines. The balancing of these V8 always show the preoccupation with an aeronautical use.

Constrained with the military secrecy (the files of Satory were made available only in the years 1990), he speaks about his flights only in 1906 after that of Santos-Dumont to Bagatelle. This silence is at the origin of the controversy maintained by the partisans the Frères Wright. In France, at the time, nobody heard of the Wright brothers. Santos Dumont thus claims to be the father of aviation. A national debate begins during several years, without one really managing to slice. One generally ends up admitting the flight of Eole, which took off in front of witnesses, and pushing back the existence of the flight of 1897. But work of the general Pierre Lissarague, carried out in the years 1980 and 1990 (work based on the secret files of the army, made public in the years 1980) tends to prove the reality of the flight of 1897.

In order to make all the light on these flights, several motorized models of Eole and Plane III were produced. If the models of Eole show clearly that the apparatus was able to rise in the airs, success is less Net with Plane III. Its very bad balance and its unusable rudder would explain the reasons of the accident in any case.

End of a career

In spite of the destruction of Plane III and although the government turns its budgets towards the airship of Colonel Renard, Ader its project does not give up immediately. He proposes for example his fantastic steam engine (lightest in the world) with colonel Renard. Very quickly, it turns to the motorization to gasoline, which seems more promising to him, and develops a very balanced engine which it proposes there still to equip with the airships. Not receiving the discounted reception, it gives up aeronautics definitively. It destroys its workshop and launches out in the development of its own cars, which gain some sporting prices quickly. In parallel, it tests and patents a boat with Air cushion called " Boat slipping on the eau" , while its company installs the first underwater cable under the Mediterranean.

End-of-life

Ader takes its retirement. It finishes its life close to Toulouse, in its Vigne S. Of time to other, Panhard and Levassor requires of him to test their last models. In 1914, it uses its influence to help with the creation of a military aviation. It sends many mails to the ministry for the War, without it being known if its opinion weighed or not in the strategic choices. Its brain always bubbles of ideas (one found sketches of Turbine S and engines in its notebooks of notes), but it did not build more anything.

He dies in 84 years the May 3rd 1925 with Toulouse after a late national recognition. Only plane III survived. The apparatus is exposed to Paris with the Musée of Arts and Métiers, as well as the steam engine. One owes with large the Photographe Nadar beautiful Photo S of the workshops of Ader where the expert will be able to see, in addition to Eole, of the elements of the sailplane and the Zephyr.

Although Ader did not invent the word " avion" (of Latin " avis" who means bird, used for the first time by the Gabriel journalist of Landelle in 1863), one owes him the paternity of the first flight, like two works on aviation: the first stage of the French military aviation and Military aviation , without counting the many inventions out of the field of aeronautics.

Sources

Pierre Lissarague, Clement Ader, inventor of planes , Toulouse, Privat, 1990. ISBN 2708953559
At the time of Clement Ader , work coordinated by the Academy of the Air and Space, 1994. ISBN 2877170446
Re-examined PEGASE (re-examined friends of the Museum of Le Bourget).

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