Octave Chanute

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Octave Chanute bigraphy, stories - aviation pioneer

Octave Chanute : biography

February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910

Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832, Paris – November 23, 1910, Chicago, Illinois) was born in France but considered himself a true American American railway engineer and aviation pioneer. He provided many budding enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers with help and advice, and helped to publicize their flying experiments. At his death he was hailed as the father of aviation and the heavier-than-air flying machine.

Death

Chanute died on November 23, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois. He is buried in the James Family plot at Springdale Cemetery in Peoria, Illinois, with his wife, the former Annie Riddell James (June 3, 1834 – April 3, 1902), and daughter, Alice Chanute Boyd (December 24, 1859 – October 7, 1920).

Biography

Railroad Engineer

[[Hannibal Bridge from 1908 postcard]] Octave Chanute began his training as a budding civil engineer in 1848. He was widely considered brilliant and innovative in the engineering profession. During his career he designed and constructed the United States two biggest stock yards, Chicago Stock Yards (1865) and Kansas City Stockyards (1871). He designed and built the Hannibal Bridge which was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1869 and established Kansas City as the dominant city in the region. He designed many other bridges during his railroad career, including the Illinois River rail bridge at Peoria, Illinois, the Genesee River Gorge rail bridge near Portageville, New York (now in Letchworth State Park), the bridges at Sibley, Missouri, across the Missouri River and at Fort Madison, Iowa, across the Mississippi River, and the Kinzua Bridge in Pennsylvania.

Chanute also established a procedure for pressure-treating wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood’s lifespan in the tracks. Establishing the first commercial plants, he convinced railroad men that it was commercially feasible to make money by spending money on treating ties to conserve natural resources. As a way to track the age and longevity of railroad ties and other wooden structures, he also introduced the railroad date nail in the United States.

Chanute retired from the Erie Railway in 1883 to become an engineering consultant.

Aviation pioneer

Quote

"…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."

Chanute first became interested in aviation watching a balloon take off in Peoria, IL, in 1856. When he retired from his railroad career in 1883, he decided to devote 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. He published his findings in a series of articles in The Railroad and Engineering Journal from 1891 to 1893, which were then re-published in the influential book Progress in Flying Machines in 1894.Chanute, Octave. 1894, reprinted 1998. Progress in Flying Machines. Dover ISBN 0-486-29981-3 This was the most systematic global survey of fixed-wing heavier-than-air aviation research published up to that time.

At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Chanute organized in collaboration with Albert Zahm a highly successful International Conference on Aerial Navigation.

Chanute was too old to fly himself, so he partnered with younger experimenters, including Augustus M. Herring and William Avery. In 1896 and 1897 Chanute, Herring, and Avery tested a design based on the work of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, as well as hang gliders of their own design in the dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan near the town of Miller Beach, Indiana, just east of what became the city of Gary. These experiments convinced Chanute that the best way to achieve extra lift without a prohibitive increase in weight was to stack several wings one above the other, an idea proposed by the British engineer Francis Wenham in 1866 and realized in flight by Lilienthal in the 1890s. Chanute introduced the "strut-wire" braced wing structure that would be used in powered biplanes of the future. He based the design on the Pratt 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.