Appareils d'Aviation Les Frères Voisin
| Industry | Aerospace |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1906 |
| Headquarters | France |
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Key people
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Gabriel Voisin Maurice Colieux |
Voisin was a French aircraft manufacturing company, one of the first in the world. It was established in 1906 by Gabriel Voisin and his brother Charles, and was continued by Gabriel after Charles died in an automobile accident in 1912; the full official company name then became Société Anonyme des Aéroplanes G. Voisin (English: Aeroplanes Voisin public limited company). It created Europe's first manned, heavier-than-air powered aircraft capable of a sustained (1 km), circular, controlled flight, including take-off and landing, the Voisin-Farman I. On 28 December 1909, French aviator M. Albert Kimmerling made the first manned, heavier-than-air powered flight in South Africa or even Africa in a Voisin 1907 biplane.
During World War I, it was a major producer of military aircraft, notably the Voisin III. After the war Gabriel Voisin abandoned the aviation industry, and set up a company to design and produce luxury automobiles, called Avions Voisin.
Gabriel Voisin had been employed by Ernest Archdeacon to work on the construction of gliders and then entered into partnership with Louis Blériot, to form the company Ateliers d' Aviation Edouard Surcouf, Blériot et Voisin in 1905. Gabriel Voisin bought out Blériot and on 5 November 1906 established the Appareils d'Aviation Les Frères Voisin with his brother Charles (English: Flying Machines of Voisin Brothers). The company, based in the Parisian suburb of Billancourt, was the first commercial aircraft factory in the world.
Like many early aircraft companies, Voisin were prepared to build machines to the designs of customers, this work supporting their own design experiments. The company's first customers were a M. Florencie, who commissioned them to build an ornithopter he had designed, and Henri Kapferer, for whom they built a pusher configuration biplane of their own design. The latter was underpowered, having a Buchet engine of only 20 hp (15 kW), and it failed to fly. However, Kapferer introduced them to Leon Delagrange, for whom they built a similar machine, powered by a 50 hp (37 kW) Antoinette engine. This was first successfully flown by Charles Voisin on 30 March 1907, achieving a straight-line flight of 60 m (200 ft). In turn Delagrange introduced them to Henri Farman, who ordered an identical aircraft. These two aircraft are often referred to by their owners' names as the Voisin-Delagrange No.1 and the Voisin-Farman No.1, and were the foundation of the company's success. On 13 January 1908 Farman used his aircraft to win the "Grand Prix de l'aviation" offered by Ernest Archdeacon and Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe for the first closed-circuit flight of over a kilometre. Since the achievements of the Wright Brothers were widely disbelieved at the time, this was seen as a major breakthrough in the conquest of the air, and brought Voisin Frères many orders for similar aircraft; around sixty were built.
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