PIONEER AIRMAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22225, 27 September 1935, Page 18

PIONEER AIRMAN

BLERIOT'S FIRST EFFORTS RESEARCHES KEPT SECRET "Without the taste for freedom i should never have been an airman," said M. Louis Bleriot, the .first man to fly across the English Channel, in an interview in Paris recently. After telling how as an electrician at; the age of 23 ho invented the Bleriot acetylene lam]), lie described how the sight of an aeroplane at the Paris Exhibition in 1901 made him "realise all the possibilities that lay in it." , From then on he was at heart an airman. "In my workshop I set aside a corner for my researches, but 1 kept my activities quiet—l did not want people to think the inventor of the Bleriot lamp was a madman."

For the lirst live years lie concentrated his efforts upon a machine with Happing wings, buildingffor it a special lightweight engine. He refused to be discouraged about his failures, and the machine which finally flew the Channel in 1909 was Bleriot's No. 11.

Pointing out that the machine in which in 1934 Rossi and Codos established the world's long-distance record was built upon the same principles as that which flew the Channel, he said: "That was the secret of my success; you should never abandon an idea which has produced a definite result, be it ever so small."