Jean-Marie Breaking
See also: Breaking
Jean Marie Breaking (Concarneau, 1817 - Douarnenez, 1872) was sailor, captain with the coastal traffic and became one of the first aviators French before Clément Ader and the Frères Wright. It is known to have achieved a flight planed on an unknown date located, if one takes account of the whole of testimonys, between 1858 and 1861, starting from the mountain of Holy-Anne-the-Fen (high 60 m) vis-a-vis the wind, raising its assistant with several meters of the ground at the end of the trailer.
The shape of its sailplane, a winged boat provided with mobile wings, was " librement" inspired by the wings of albatross which he had studied at the time of military service in the Pacific.
It had thus perceived the phenomena of Portance (which it called “aspiration”) during the variations of Incidence of the wings.
It deposited in 1857 a patent suggesting the bond between the incidence and the bearing pressure of the wing of the sailplane. However, it is known today that the machine of the take-off was an evolution of that appearing in the patent, since this one does not have the mobile tail about which spoke several witnesses (in particular its nephews) and Breaking itself. One also knows that he would have arrived to this result following many tests, all starting from high points located around bay of Douarnenez, actually renewing what had already made Cayley, Henson and Stringfelow in England in the years 1848-49, which he obviously took as a starting point and joining what also made the Louis brothers and Felix of the Temple in Brest at the same time.
Helped by the imperial Navy, it built with Brest another sailplane, the Albatros , lighter and of a scale perhaps of 18 meters (although on this point also the divergent opinion, between 1867 and 1868 with which it managed to republish the exploit of take-off starting from a hillock (with the polygon of the Navy in Brest), but could not go beyond that.
A counterpart of the winged boat (inspired by the patent, but taking some freedoms or interpretations, like the light and tended ultra entoilage or the cover of the upper part like a kayak!) is exposed to the Musée of the air and space of Le Bourget. A counterpart of the Albatros will be exposed in the future air terminal of Brest.
It is the image of this spectacular sailplane which arrived to us, because Pépin wire carried out several photographs, of angles or installations modified a little, in position on its cart of launching. Thanks to Yves Peslin and in Jean Goualch (work published in 1986) one knows that they are four different installations.
On often lent to Nadar the origin of these stereotypes, this because Gabriel of Landelle, which invented the word “aviation besides” - offered some to him, and that certain reproductions are captioned: “Nadar Collection”.
Mais it acts well of Pépin wire which carried them out ( Pépin father exerted with Laval), and that on the original photographs that one can consult in the form of “Calling card”, particular format of 6 X approximately 10,5 cm, it is clearly shown “Pip, street of Siam, with Brest”.