As everybody knows, airplanes didn’t arrive until appropriate power plants, gasoline engines, were invented. The older steam engines were much too heavy.
As is the case with a daunting number of things that “everybody knows,” this is not true. Clement Ader, who was born April 2, 1841 in France, invented a working airplane in 1886, the Ader Éole. It featured bat-like wings, a four-bladed propeller, and a four-cylinder steam engine. And according to eyewitnesses, it actually flew, in 1890. Ader isn’t known as the “first in flight” like the Wright Brothers, which is possibly because although he flew the Éole for somewhere around 50 meters, it wasn’t a “controlled” flight. The machine did get off the ground, but it didn’t have a way to control its height or direction after that.
Ader built the Éole II and the Éole III, had less success — or perhaps fewer eyewitnesses He may have flown Éole II for much longer distance, but nobody was there to see it. The Éole III was financed by the French Army, but they kept the results of the program secret. It’s known that the Éole III was badly damaged by a gust of wind during a takeoff attempt, and was subsequently abandoned.
Ader published L’Aviation Miltaire, a book about the possibilities of aerial warfare, and described modern aircraft carriers. He published his book in 1909, even before WWI, so there weren’t any aircraft carriers at the time. However, the US Navy got hold of a copy of his book and started building the first one the very next year.
The French language includes the word “avion” for airplanes thanks to Ader. There was a French postage stamp with his image issued in 1938, and one of the Airbus factories is named after him. For some reason nobody has named an aircraft carrier after Clement Ader, but that might be coming someday. He’s still known as “the father of aviation,” and if his designs had been copied more closely, he might be known as “the father of steam-powered flight.”
An 1897 photograph of the Éole III
