Louis Blériot

Louis Charles Joseph Blériot (1 July 1872 – 1 August 1936) was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for trucks and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. In 1909 he became world famous for making the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft, winning the prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. and the founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company.

Early years

Born at No.17h rue de l'Arbre à Poires (now rue Sadi-Carnot) in Cambrai, Louis was the first of five children born to Clémence and Charles Blériot. At the age of 10, Blériot was sent as a boarder to the Institut Notre Dame in Cambrai, where he frequently won class prizes, including one for drawing. When he was 15, he moved on to the Lycée at Amiens, where he lived with an aunt. After passing the exams for his baccalaureate in science and German, he determined to try to enter the prestigious École Centrale in Paris. Entrance was by a demanding exam for which special tuition was necessary: consequently Blériot spent a year at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris. He passed the exam, placing 74th among the 243 successful candidates, and doing especially well in the tests of drawing ability. After three years of demanding study at the École Centrale, Blériot graduated 113th of 203 in his graduating class.