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Octave Chanute | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Photo of Chanute between 1900–1910 | |
| Born | (1832-02-18)18 February 1832 |
| Died | 23 November 1910(1910-11-23) (aged 78) |
| Resting place | Springdale Cemetery,Peoria, Illinois |
| Citizenship | French, American[1] |
| Occupations | Civil engineer, railway engineer and bridge designer, aviation pioneer |
Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910) was aFrench-American[1]civil engineer andaviation pioneer. He advised and publicized many aviation enthusiasts, including theWright brothers. At his death, he was hailed as the father of aviation and the initial concepts of the heavier-than-air flying machine.[2]
Octave Chanute was born inParis to Elise and Joseph Chanut, professor at theCollège de France. Octave and Joseph emigrated to the United States of America in 1838, when Joseph was named Vice President of Jefferson College in Louisiana. Octave attended private schools in New York. He added the "e" to his last name in his adult life. In 1857, he married Anne Riddell James, with whom he had a son and three daughters.[3]
Chanute began his training as a civil engineer in 1848.He was widely considered brilliant and innovative in the engineering profession. He designed and constructed the two biggest stockyards in the United States,Chicago Stock Yards (1865) andKansas City Stockyards (1871). He designed and built theHannibal Bridge withJoseph Tomlinson andGeorge S. Morison. In 1869, this bridge establishedKansas City, Missouri as the dominant city in the region, as the first bridge to cross theMissouri River there. He designed many other bridges during his railroad career, including theIllinois River rail bridge atChillicothe, Illinois,[4] the Genesee River Gorge rail bridge nearPortageville, New York (now inLetchworth State Park), theSibley Railroad Bridge across the Missouri River atSibley, Missouri, theFort Madison Toll Bridge atFort Madison, Iowa, and theKinzua Bridge inPennsylvania.
Chanute established a procedure for pressure-treating wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood's lifespan. Establishing the first commercial plants, he convinced railroad men that it was advantageous to expend funds treating ties to extend their service life, thus reducing replacement costs. To monitor the longevity of railroad ties and other wooden items, he introduced the railroaddate nail in the United States.
Chanute retired from the Erie Railway in 1883 to become an independent engineering consultant.
...let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and good-will among all men.[6]
Chanute became interested in aviation after watching a balloon ascend inPeoria, Illinois, in 1856. When he retired from his railroad career in 1883, he devoted some leisure time to furthering the new science of aviation. Applying his engineering background, Chanute collected all available data from flight experimenters around the world and combined it with the knowledge gathered as a civil engineer in the past. He published his findings in a series of articles inThe Railroad and Engineering Journal from 1891[7] to 1893, which were then re-published in the influential bookProgress in Flying Machines in 1894.[8] This was the most systematic global survey of fixed-wingheavier-than-air aviation research published up to that time.
At theWorld's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Chanute collaborated with Albert Zahm to organize a highly successful International Conference on Aerial Navigation.
Chanute was too old to fly, so he partnered with younger experimenters, includingAugustus M. Herring and William Avery. In 1896, Chanute, Herring, and Avery tested a design based on the work of German aviation pioneerOtto Lilienthal, and ofhang gliders of their own design. The testing was in the dunes along the shore ofLake Michigan near the town ofMiller Beach,Indiana, just east of what became the city ofGary.[2] These experiments convinced Chanute that the best way to achieve extra lift without a prohibitive increase in weight was to stack several wings, an idea proposed by the British engineerFrancis Herbert Wenham in 1866 and realized in flight by Lilienthal in the 1890s. Chanute introduced the "strut-wire" braced wing structure that was used in poweredbiplanes of the future, not seriously challenged until the pioneering efforts ofHugo Junkers to develop all-metal cantilever airframe technology without external bracingfrom 1915 onward. Chanute based his "interplane strut" concept on thePratt truss, which was familiar to him from his bridge-building work. The Wright brothers based their glider designs on the Chanute "double-decker", as they called it. A new design of a biplane glider was developed and flown in 1897.
Chanute corresponded with many aviation pioneers, includingOtto Lilienthal,Louis Pierre Mouillard,Gabriel Voisin,John J. Montgomery,Louis Blériot,Ferdinand Ferber,Lawrence Hargrave, andAlberto Santos Dumont. In 1897, he started a correspondence with British aviatorPercy Pilcher. Following Chanute's ideas, Pilcher built atriplane, but he was killed in a glider crash in October 1899 before he could attempt to fly it.
In 1900, Wilbur Wright readProgress in Flying Machines and contacted Chanute. Chanute helped to publicize the Wright brothers' work and provided consistent encouragement, visiting their camp nearKitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The Wrights and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters between 1900 and 1910.[9]
Chanute freely shared his knowledge about aviation with anyone who was interested, and expected others to do the same. He encouraged colleagues topatent their inventions. His open approach led to friction with the Wright brothers, who believed their ideas about aircraft control were unique and refused to share them. Chanute did not believe that the Wright flying machine patent, premised onwing warping, could be enforced and said so publicly, including a newspaper interview in which he said, "I admire the Wrights. I feel friendly toward them for the marvels they have achieved, but you can easily gauge how I feel concerning their attitude at present by the remark I made to Wilbur Wright recently. I told him I was sorry to see they were suing other experimenters and abstaining from entering the contests and competitions in which other men are brilliantly winning laurels. I told him that in my opinion they are wasting valuable time over lawsuits which they ought to concentrate in their work. Personally, I do not think that the courts will hold that the principle underlying the warping tips can be patented."[10] The friendship was still impaired when Chanute died, but Wilbur Wright attended Chanute's memorial service at the family's home. Wright wrote a eulogy that was read at the Aero Club meeting in January 1911.
When the Aero Club of Illinois was founded on February 10, 1910, Chanute was its first president until his death.[11][12]
Chanute died on November 23, 1910, inChicago, Illinois, after battlingpneumonia. Wilbur Wright attended his funeral to honor him.[13]
The town ofChanute, Kansas,[14] is named after Chanute. Three small towns in southeast Kansas were vying for the railroad's land office and Chanute suggested that they incorporate, to make the larger town more attractive to the railroad.
The formerChanute Air Force Base nearRantoul, Illinois, was started in 1917 by the U.S. Army as Chanute Field. The base was decommissioned in 1993 and converted to peacetime endeavors. One of these endeavors was the now-closedOctave Chanute Aerospace Museum, which detailed the history of Chanute Air Force Base and of aviation in general, and included a replica of Chanute's 1896 glider. The location of the base is now the Chanute Field Historic District, and is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.
In 1902, theWestern Society of Engineers began to present theOctave Chanute Award for papers of merit on engineering innovations. From 1939 to 2005, theAmerican Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented theChanute Flight Award for an outstanding contribution made by a pilot or test personnel to the advancement of the art, science, and technology ofaeronautics.
In 1963, Chanute was inducted into theNational Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.[15]
In 1974, Chanute was inducted into theInternational Air & Space Hall of Fame.[16]
In 1978, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated Octave Chanute with a pair of 21-cent airmail stamps.
In 1996, the National Soaring Museum honored the 100th anniversary of the glider flying experiments in the sand dunes along Lake Michigan as National Landmark of Soaring No. 8.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, inDaytona Beach, Florida, has an off-campus residence hall, the Chanute Complex, for upper-class students.
TheGary Bathing Beach Aquatorium, inGary, Indiana, houses a museum dedicated to both Octave Chanute and theTuskegee Airmen. The historic bathing pavilion was designed by architectGeorge Washington Maher.
He is represented in theFrieze of American History detailThe Birth of Aviation, in theU.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC.[17]
