Henri Giffard
Baptiste Henri Jacques Giffard ( born January 8, 1825 Paris, † April 1882 ) was a French engineer and aviation pioneer who has made an outstanding contribution by the use of steam power as a drive for the aviation industry.
Life and work
Steam technology
The inventor was inspired by steam engines. After studying at the Collège royal de Bourbon, he started as a draftsman at the railway line St. Germain. Through improvements to steam engines, he earned a fortune. He developed such as a revolutionary steam jet pump ( see picture).
Airship
Some seven decades after Jean -Baptiste de la Place Meusnier Giffard attacked for the first time whose ideas founded on. After helping the French engineer Jullien in the construction of an airship already in 1850, the propeller was driven by clockwork, he reported in 1851 a patent for the " application of the vapor in the air navigation" on. He built along with two young engineers, a cigar-shaped airship with a length of 44 meters and a diameter of 12 meters, which took 2500 cubic meters of gas. Driven was the airship by a 45 -kg, 3 hp payable steam engine. The ship lifted on September 24, 1852 from the first time. The 27.5 km long flight from Paris to Trappes at a speed of eight kilometers per hour is the first manned motorized flight in history. Giffard recognized after this first flight, that the weight of the steam engine was too high and the output power is also not sufficiently dimensioned. Another, also steam-powered airship exploded during test flight in 1855. Giffard and his companion escaped the flames unharmed. The interest in the construction of airships and balloons dropped at this time, however, noticeably.
1878 Giffard built a spherical balloon with a diameter of 36 m and a volume of approximately 24,400 cubic meters. During the 1878 World Fair in Paris, the balloon (Le Grand Ballon Captif - The big balloon ) was combined with its up to 52 persons which is gondola on a 600 m long rope abandoned. The balloon was one of the attractions of the world exhibition and promoted in this period approximately 35,000 people.
End of life
Because he could not come to terms with his incipient blindness, sat Giffard in 1882 to end his life. He is immortalized in particular on the Eiffel Tower, see: The 72 names on the Eiffel Tower.