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Gabriel Voisin
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Voisin, Gabriel; Voisin, Charles Farman, Henri
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Born:
February 5, 1880, Belleville-sur-SaĂŽne, France
Died:
December 25, 1973, Moulin d’Ozenay, near Tournus (aged 93)
Subjects Of Study:
kite
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Voisin, Gabriel; Voisin, Charles
Voisin, Gabriel; Voisin, Charles Gabriel Voisin (left) with his brother Charles.

Gabriel Voisin

French aircraft manufacturer
Written by
Tom D. Crouch
Curator Emeritus, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Author of The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright and many others.
Tom D. Crouch
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Gabriel Voisin (born February 5, 1880, Belleville-sur-Saîne, France—died December 25, 1973, Moulin d’Ozenay, near Tournus) was a French aviation pioneer and aircraft manufacturer.

Voisin was one of the most colorful figures in the early history of aviation. Trained as an architect and inspired by the work of the French aviation pioneer Clément Ader, he began to pursue an interest in flight as early as 1898. With the assistance of his younger brother Charles, he built and tested a variety of kites, intending to build one large enough to lift a human being.

Voisin reached a major turning point in 1903 when Ernest Archdeacon, a wealthy lawyer and aeronautical enthusiast, hired him to test-fly a copy of a Wright brothers’ glider. The two men founded Wright Company, the first commercial aircraft manufacturer. Their first products were a pair of biplane gliders, one built for Archdeacon and the other for French aviator Louis BlĂ©riot, both of which were tested behind towboats on the Seine River. Voisin and BlĂ©riot then united to form a new company that produced at least one unsuccessful powered aircraft for BlĂ©riot. In addition, Voisin claimed to have been involved in the construction of the Santos-Dumont No. 14-bis, the aircraft in which Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first public flight in Europe (November 12, 1906). Voisin and BlĂ©riot went their separate ways before the end of 1906, opening the way for Gabriel and Charles Voisin to establish their own firm.

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NASA's Reduced Gravity Program provides the unique weightless or zero-G environment of space flight for testing and training of human and hardware reactions. NASA used the turbojet KC-135A to run these parabolic flights from 1963 to 2004.
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The first aircraft produced by the new firm was a failure. The second, purchased by Ferdinand LĂ©on Delagrange, flew for the first time on March 16, 1907, at Bagatelle. On November 9, 1907, a Voisin biplane known as the Voisin-Farman I, owned and operated by the French aeronautical pioneer Henri Farman, became the first airplane in the world, other than a Wright brothers’ machine, to remain in the air for more than a minute. Farman won the Deutsche-Archdeacon Prize of 50,000 francs on January 13, 1908, for the first officially witnessed circular flight of 1 km (0.6 mile). By midsummer, Voisin aircraft were covering distances up to 14 km (8.7 miles).

Voisin continued to manufacture aircraft through World War I, amassing a considerable fortune in the process. With the return of peace, he turned his attention to automobile production, the industry in which he would remain involved for the next 30 years.

Tom D. Crouch