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STORY SO FAR: Wilbur Wright is experimenting with kites and gliders. Needing advice, he has sent a letter to the well-known engineer Octave Chanute. CHAPTER...
Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910) was a French-American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He advised and publicized many aviation enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers. At his death, he was hailed as the father of aviation and the initial concepts of the heavier-than-air flying machine.
(1832-1910) Early Pioneer; Glider Designer Bio Octave Chanute was possibly the first person to publicly promote the sport of gliding and soaring in the United States of America.
Octave Chanute was a leading American civil engineer and aeronautical pioneer. (Read Orville Wright’s 1929 biography of his brother, Wilbur.) Immigrating to the United States with his father in 1838, Chanute attended private schools in New York City.
Octave Chanute: Pioneer Glider and Father of the Science of Aviation By Frank F. Fowle We are meeting on this historic ground this afternoon with a dual purpose, to honor the genius of a great engineer, and to mark the location where his pioneer experiments with gliders commenced an epoch in the science and art of aviation
Chanute had designed a bi-plane glider in 1897 and it is said that the Wright Brothers based their glider designs on the Chanute configuration which they called the “double-decker.” Chanute visited the Wrights in Kitty Hawk and continued the contact until his death in 1910.
Octave Chanute was a genuine pioneer of glider flight in the United States. He focused on the development of a mechanized control system rather than relying on shifting body weight to aim the aircraft (the accepted method of control at the time).
