LOUIS BLERIOT.
Louis Bleriot, designer and builder of the celebrated Bleriot monoplanes, and himself a pilot of the first rank, was born in Cambrai, France, in 1872. He graduated from a noted technical school, and soon attached himself to the group of young men—all under thirty years of age—who were experimenting with gliders in the effort to fly. His attempts at first were with the flapping-wing contrivances, but he soon gave these up as a failure, and devoted his energy to the automobile industry; and the excellent Bleriot acetylene headlight testifies to his constructive ability in that field.
Attracted by the experiments of M. Ernest Archdeacon he joined his following, and with Gabriel Voisin engaged in building gliders of the biplane type. By 1907 he had turned wholly to the monoplane idea, and in April of that year made his first leap into the air with a power-driven monoplane. By September he had so improved his machine that he was able to fly 600 feet, and in June, 1908, he broke the record for monoplanes by flying nearly a mile. Again and again he beat his own records, and at length the whole civilized world was thrilled by his triumphant flight across the British Channel on July 25, 1909.
The Bleriot machines hold nearly all the speed records, and many of those in other lines of achievement, and M. Bleriot enjoys the double honor of being an eminently successful manufacturer as well as a dauntless aviator of heroic rank.