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Clément Ader Biography

Clément Ader

(Muret, 1841-Toulouse, 1925) French aeronautical engineer.Already in his childhood he designed a large kite that could lift adult men off the ground.Ader was inventive, and in his youth he made a velocipede with rubber wheels and a balloon that he built during the Franco-Prussian War and that he gave to the city of Toulouse at the end of the war.

In 1876 he left his job at the Administration des Ponts et Chaussées (Ministry of Bridges and Roads), he moved to Paris and devoted himself to communications.In 1880 he collaborated in the installation of the first private telephone line in the city, using components designed by him; one of them was the Théâtrophone , with which you could listen to opera from your own home.All of this brought him great income.

Ader observed the flight of numerous species of birds and bats, which he captured and kept in facilities built in his own home.His purpose was to achieve a machine with a lifting force such that it counteracts that of gravity and the weight of the materials used.This work resulted in the construction of a flying apparatus, a project that required several years of effort (from 1886 to 1889).Ader gave it the name of the Greek god of the winds, Eole (Aeolus) and, upon patenting it in 1890, he first applied the term "airplane" to it, an acronym for Appareil ailé pour la navigation aérienne dit: Avion , or "winged apparatus for air navigation, called an airplane" .

It consisted of a heavy machine weighing more than 200 kg (about 300 with pilot) driven by a powerful steam boiler with two-cylinder alcohol burner and a power of 20 CV (in a ratio of 1 Horse-Steam for every 14 kilos); this engine powered a four-bladed bamboo propeller.It had large bat wings (inspired by those of the kirívula of India); articulated, folding and elastic, they covered a wooden frame, and their wingspan was 14 m.It rested on four wheels, one of them more forward to prevent the machine from tipping over.He had no controls except for the engine and wings.

He secretly tested it on October 9, 1890, near Gretz, in the park of the castle of Armainvilliers, about thirty kilometers southeast of Paris.It was owned by Madame Péreire (widow of a well-known banker), who had taken in Ader and his assistants since August.On the day of the test, only the inventor, his two assistants Eloi Vallier and Espinosa, and Mrs.Péreire with her family and a friend were present.

The experience took place on a track 200 m long and 25 wide; Around midday, when there was no wind, the Eole was brought to the runway, and a few minutes before four in the afternoon Ader started the engine.At four minutes past four the machine picked up speed, traveled part of the track, lifted the wheels off the ground and, for a couple of minutes, jumped 50 m to 20 cm from the ground.Ader excitedly pointed to the place where the Eole had lifted off the ground and compiled the results in a report.He asked the audience to be silent for the moment, although he himself, on October 12, wrote to the photographer Félix Nadar, a friend of his, to communicate his success.

After that first experience, Ader changed part of the engine and renamed the device Eole II .In September 1891, he carried out a new test in a field that the Minister of War himself, Charles Freycinet, made available to Ader in Satory; however, the device ran into carts and the tests had to be suspended.After the damage had been fixed, the Eole II was displayed in the city pavilion, where it could be carefully examined by the Minister of War.Thus, while the French Society for Air Navigation (in a letter from its president Villeneuve to the American engineer and theoretician Octave Chanute) valued the experiments little, the third model was sponsored by the French Ministry of War, which signed an agreement with Ader on February 3, 1892.

He promised to devise an apparatus that could fly, for a specified time and speed, at a height of hundreds of meters, and for this he received a grant from 200,000 francs (renewed on July 24, 1894 with an additional 250,000 francs).The device, called Avion III , was completed in 1897: it had two 24 hp engines each and as many four-bladed propellers.It was tested on October 14 of the same year, also in Satory, before a commission appointed by the Ministry of War (Generals Mensier and Grillon and Lieutenant of Engineers Binet).The runway was circular this time, with a 1,500 m run, and a central white line to guide the aircraft.

Ader settled into his post while his two assistants held the wings.The bad atmospheric conditions advised the postponement of the flight, but Ader decided to do it at that moment so as not to disappoint the authorities present, who had to watch the test from afar, in a shelter at a distance of a hundred meters from the runway.The Avion III rolled out of the shelter, on a trajectory tangent to the circular runway of about 60 m; when he reached it, also rolling, he marched another 150 m, but then a gust of wind threw him out of control from behind and made him continue for some 200 or 300 m off the track.At some point it could rise with difficulty into the air, but finally it came to rest violently against the ground, at which point a wing and the two propellers broke; Ader was not harmed.

While the inventor defended having flown those last 300 m without interruption (as he later collected in a diagram), the commission observed, from the tracks left by the wheels in the mud, that the journey had been made leaps and bounds (General Mensier's report did not specify whether there was a flight or not).Despite this, they were in favor of continuing the investigations, but the Ministry of War did not consider it appropriate.In fact, they broke the collaboration with Ader when General Jean-Baptiste Billot affirmed that the objectives of the contracts had not been achieved (March 31, 1898).However, it gave Ader the ability to continue the project on his own; Ader looked for means of financing and tried to carry out new investigations but, lacking resources, had to abandon.

He burned all his plans and devices, except for the Avion III , which was exposed in the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900, where it was contemplated by Gabriel Voisin, an architecture student, who from then on devoted himself to the nascent aeronautics; later, and since then, it remained in the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (a copy was also made and exhibited in the Air Museum).

Ader, who retired to his home in Ribonnet (near Toulouse), did not ignore mechanics.In 1898 he patented an automobile engine with two V-cylinders.Nor did he completely forget aviation: in October 1908, he sent a letter to the French President Fallières advising him to create a military aviation school, as he considered the command of the air essential..In 1907 he wrote The first stage of military aviation in France.

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