Henri Dufaux
Henri Dufaux ( born September 18, 1879 in Chens- sur -Léman, France, † December 25, 1980 in Geneva, Switzerland ) was a French-Swiss aviation pioneer, inventor, painter and politician.
Life and work
Henri Dufaux, his brother Armand and his younger sister are as children of Noémie de Rochefort- Luçay (1856-1943) and the Geneva painter and sculptor Frédéric Dufaux (1852-1943) grew up in Paris and Geneva.
He took drawing lessons with Barthélemy Menn. His artistic work led him among other things to Florence and Paris. In 1898 he invented together with his brother Armand Dufaux bicycle motor ( Motosacoche ), which he henceforth with the company H. & A. Dufaux fils ( HADF ), a family fabricated.
Participants set of them Motosacoche SA Dufaux & Cie, they developed from 1902 onwards the tiltrotor ( convertible ). Again, together they constructed a helicopter, which was filed on February 24, 1904 for a patent for the first time publicly demonstrated on 14 April 1905. From aircraft both brothers were equally fascinating: The " Dufaux 1 " was a 17 -pound helicopter, model 2, an aircraft was unable to fly with eight wings, and the " Dufaux 3» crashed during the first flight.
After Armand Dufaux had flown over with the Dufaux 4 on August 28, 1910 Lake Geneva over its entire length and clearly surpassed the world record of Louis Blériot, the brothers Dufaux aroused not only in flight enthusiasts with its construction with great interest. The improved Dufaux 5 biplane led Failloubaz Ernest ( 1892-1919 ) from 4 to 6 September 1911, the army leadership before, while flying with his friend Gustave Lecoultre as observers in the maneuvers of the 1st Army Corps reconnaissance missions. Despite a crash landing on the last day of the three day deployment highlight these flights the beginning of the Swiss military aviation. " The brothers Dufaux can claim to have brought the powered flight in Switzerland on the stage of experimentation, theory into practice across. "
As of 1913, Henri Dufaux focused increasingly on painting.