Alliott Verdon Roe

Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe ( born April 26, 1877 in Patricroft, † January 4, 1958 in London) was a British aviation pioneer and founder of the air carrier's Avro.

Life

Edwin Alliott Roe, was born as the fourth child of the physician Dr. Edwin Hodson Roe and his wife Sofia, born Verdon.

Alliott, as he preferred to be called, was never a good student; it is made ​​out to be, that physical education was more important to him than the learning subjects. Nevertheless, Roe interested early on technical matters, and at the age of 13, he filed his first patent for a carpet brush with a replaceable brush head on.

With 14 years of Roe left the school. He wanted to see something of the world, and so he traveled with a friend of his father in March 1892 to Canada, there to be trained as a surveyor.

Due to an economic crisis, the work of a surveyor in Canada but was not asked at the time, and so Roe worked as a tree planter, later as a fisherman to earn his livelihood. As the economic situation did not improve in the following year, he returned to England.

In the summer of 1893 he began an apprenticeship in a locomotive factory in Horwich / Lancashire, which he successfully finished after 5 years. He then got an offer for employment at a torpedo factory in Portsmouth, but opted for a naval career and enrolled at King's College in London in the course of study Marine Engineering a. However, he was dismissed in the Navy due to poor exam results.

However, his qualification was sufficient for entry into the Merchant Marine, and he was fifth engineer on a steamship of the British and South African Royal Mail Company. His career in the merchant marine ended - temporarily interrupted by a severe malaria disease - as 3rd Engineer. Roe told later that he had observed on one of his last trips in 1902 a passing flying albatross, which inspired him to deal with the art of flying.

So his first flight model was also modeled an albatross. While it did not fly, but Roe was not discouraged them and made more models of different types, from single deck to the model with several wings, including some canards, so-called " canard ". Some of his models showed very good sliding properties.

After he had paid off in the merchant marine, Roe got a job as an engineer with the car manufacturer Brotherhood Crocker, the later company Simplex.

There he was responsible for the development of an automatic transmission, which his employer saved to buy such a system against high patent fees in the German company Mercedes- Benz, which had developed at the time the only such system.

In January 1906, a letter Roes was published in a newspaper for the engineering, in which he reported on his successes with a rudder controlled model aircraft and stated that he expected that, where such efforts would be made ​​in the summer of 1906, the first motor-powered aircraft could ascend in England, followed countered in the Times newspaper that such a flight had been condemned not only dangerous but also technical reasons for failure.

Roe, who had already heard in 1903 by the success of the Wright brothers, sat down with Wilbur Wright in conjunction, the Roe then encouraged in a written reply to pursue his goals. And it turned Roe in March 1906 at the motor and Aeronautical Show in London several paper gliders, which were based on the Wright's design, and a slightly larger model, in which a Wright -like aircraft combined with Roes development, a controller via wing twist and rowing, before.

After a brief employment as a secretary at the Aero Club in April 1906 Roe traveled to the USA to there for a living in Denver Scots, who wanted to build a man-carrying steam-powered helicopter to work as a designer. But before this project was completed, Roe returned to England. The helicopter was actually built by the way, but crashed during the first start and was destroyed.

In November 1906, Roe had patented a process developed by his steering wheel, with a flying machine by turning to the left or right and by raising and lowering up or down could be controlled, the forerunner of the stick control, which to this day in aviation application place.

Roes flight models, now partly rubber-powered drive, got bigger and more powerful, reaching heights of over 30 meters.

Meanwhile Roe financed his further developments by winning prizes, most of which were exposed at the time of major daily newspapers for aeronautical services.

In January 1907 Roe stated publicly that he was busy trying to build a "real" aircraft, and in December of the same year he began the first flight tests of its three-decker on the car racing circuit at Brooklands.

Together with J. A. Prestwich, the designer of the JAP engines, Roe founded in September 1908, the Japanese Avroplane Company, however, the cooperation ended shortly afterwards again; Roe and Prestwich had a mixed opinion about the size of the to be built triplane.

Roe's assets were now almost consumed, and to his attempts to continue to finance, he borrowed money from his father and his younger brother Humphrey, called HV, with whom he was closely associated since childhood. H.V. was now a successful businessman; he owned the company Bulls -Eye, which produced suspenders.

The two brothers founded on 27 April 1909, the company AV Roe and Company, which should then become one of the most successful aircraft manufacturers in England.

A.V. Roe sold his shares in the firm Avro in 1928.

On New Year's Day of 1928 he received because of his services to the British aviation knighted and then officially added his mother's maiden name to his surname.

Sir Alliott bought 1933 shares of company aircraft Saunders, the Saunders -Roe Ltd. thereafter. called, and was still president of this company, when he died on January 4, 1958.