Two brothers by the Saône

Gabriel Voisin, born in 1880 at Belleville-sur-Saône, was trained in industrial design and architecture. The sight of Clément Ader’s Avion III at the 1900 Paris Exposition hooked him on flight. In 1904 the aviation patron Ernest Archdeacon hired him to test a Wright-type glider on the dunes at Berck-sur-Mer, and in June 1905 Voisin flew a float glider towed along the Seine by a fast motorboat. A brief partnership with Louis Blériot ended in a quarrel; Gabriel bought him out.

The first aircraft factory

On 5 November 1906 Gabriel and his younger brother Charles founded Appareils d’Aviation Les Frères Voisin at Billancourt, the first commercial aircraft factory in the world. They built to order: an ornithopter for one customer, Santos-Dumont’s 14-bis engine installation for another, pusher biplanes for anyone who would pay. On 30 March 1907 Charles flew the biplane built for Léon Delagrange 60 metres in a straight line. Delagrange introduced them to Henri Farman, who ordered an identical machine.

A kilometre round Issy

On 13 January 1908 Farman flew that Voisin round a closed one-kilometre circuit at Issy-les-Moulineaux and won the Archdeacon and Deutsch de la Meurthe prize. With the Wrights still refusing to show their work, it was hailed as Europe’s first controlled circular flight, and orders poured in; around 60 to 70 such biplanes were sold. On 8 March 1910 Raymonde de Laroche, who learned on a Voisin, became the first woman to receive a pilot’s licence. Charles was killed in a car accident in 1912, and the firm became Société Anonyme des Aéroplanes G. Voisin.

The first air victory

Voisin’s steel-framed pod-and-boom pushers suited a military looking for something robust. The Type L did well in the 1912 army trials, and its development the Voisin III equipped the first dedicated French bomber units in September 1914. On 5 October 1914 a Voisin III crewed by Sergeant Joseph Frantz and Corporal Louis Quénault brought down a German Aviatik near Reims; when the machine gun jammed, Quénault finished the job with a rifle. It was the first aircraft ever shot down by another. More than 1,350 Voisin IIIs were built, in France, Italy, Russia and Britain.

Bombers by the thousand, then cars

The line grew heavier: the Voisin VIII was France’s main night bomber in 1916 and 1917, with over 1,000 built, and some 900 Voisin Xs followed. One became an aerial ambulance carrying a surgeon, operating table and X-ray set. Then Gabriel Voisin walked away. After the Armistice he turned the business into Avions Voisin, a maker of luxurious, aerodynamic motor cars, and never returned to aviation. He died on Christmas Day 1973.

מפעלים

• Billancourt works · Billancourt (Boulogne-Billancourt), near Paris — Rue de la Ferme; first commercial aircraft factory
• Issy-les-Moulineaux · Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris — Workshop bought from Blériot; Farman’s 1908 circuit flown at the parade ground

אֲנָשִׁים

• Gabriel Voisin · co-founder — 1880–1973; later founded the Avions Voisin car company
• Charles Voisin · co-founder and pilot — Killed in a car accident, 1912
• Henri Farman · customer and pilot — Won the Grand Prix d’Aviation in a Voisin, 1908
• Raymonde de Laroche · pilot — Learned on a Voisin; first licensed woman pilot, 1910

שיאים וראשונות

• First European closed-circuit flight of one kilometre, Henri Farman, Voisin biplane, 13 January 1908
• First aircraft shot down by another, Voisin III of Frantz and Quénault, 5 October 1914
• First powered flight in Africa, Albert Kimmerling, Voisin 1907 biplane, 28 December 1909