Saturday 9 October 2010

Clément Ader

A sculpture showing Clément Ader (1841-1925) stands at the edge of Versailles forest in Satory neighbourhood to remind us that it was precisely in Satory that this inventor and engineer first lifted his 'plane' off the ground for 300 metres in 1897, making him... a pioneer.
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Cette sculpture représentant Clément Ader (1841-1925) s'élève à l'orée de la forêt domaniale de Versailles, près de Satory, pour nous apprendre ou nous rappeler que c'est là même, à Satory, que cet ingénieur et inventeur parvint à faire décoller son "avion" et à le maintenir en l'air sur 300 metres en 1897.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

17 comments:

Chattahoochee Valley Daily said...

Interesting. That's one bit of history I was not aware of.

Lowell said...

You'd have to be batty to try something like that!

Anonymous said...

I didn't know that, very cool. It's a very nice tribute!

Sharon said...

It must have taken so much courage to go up in those first planes. I don't think I would have done it.

Sharon

Louis la Vache said...

«Louis» once posted a story about Ader on his old "Frog Blog of Louis la Vache".

T. Becque said...

Ah...I did not know, interesting.

Randy said...

Nice piece of art!

Small City Scenes said...

It looks like a bat. Did the wings flap?

Cryptic note: The pkg. is in the air. MB

Dina said...

Good for him! And it looks like he loved animals as well as flying.

akarui said...

J'admire ces pionniers de l'aviation. De nos jours prendre l'avion est si commun...
Bon weekend !!

VP said...

I can't decide if these guys were simply mad or extremely brave. A bit of both probably...

Bergson said...

j'espère que tu as pris quelque chose de plus confortable pour les USA

Halcyon said...

Cool! I didn't know about this dude.

EG CameraGirl said...

Oh my goodness. Did the wings flap?

Elisa N Viajes said...

Merci de passer pendant mon absence Ciel :)
Baci romani
Elisa

Le Journal de Chrys said...

Ohhh cela devait être une sacrée expérience à cette époque!!!!!

Francisca said...

To have the vision of flight before it was done... impressive.