Ferdinand Ferber
| Ferdinand Ferber | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 8 February 1862 |
| Died | 22 September 1909 (aged 47) Boulogne, France |
| Allegiance | France |
| Service/branch | French Army |
| Rank | Captain |
| Awards | Chevalier of the Legion of Honour |
Ferdinand Ferber (8 February 1862 – 22 September 1909) was a French Army officer who played an important role in the development of aviation during the early 1900s. Although his attempts to build aircraft were generally unsuccessful, his early recognition and publicizing of the work of the Wright Brothers was a major influence on the development of aviation in Europe.
Born in Lyon in 1862, he studied at the Ecole Polytechnique before joining the Army, eventually becoming an instructor the School of Applied Artillery at Fontainbleu in 1897. It was here that he came across the work of Otto Lilienthal, through reading about his work in an article in the Illustrierte Zeitung.
After some experimentation with models Ferber constructed his first full-size unmanned glider, which had a lozenge-shaped wing about 8 m (26 ft) across, and unsuccessfully attempted to fly it from a launching tower at his family's estate in Rue in Switzerland in August 1898. He then constructed a similar but smaller second machine, which he attempted to fly both as a kite and by towing it behind a horse, also without much success.
In early 1901 Ferber was transferred from Fontainbleu to Nice, where he was placed in command of the 17th Alpine Battery of the 19th Regiment. Here he continued his experiments: his third attempt was more closely modelled on the pattern of Lillienthal's gliders, and was Ferber's first attempt at building a man-carrying glider. Trials were made at Saint-Etienne-de-Tinée, but the wing area proved insufficient for the purpose, and so a fourth, larger, glider was constructed.
In 1901 Ferber became aware of the aeronautical experiments of Octave Chanute, a French-born American civil engineer, as a result of reading an article in the Revue Scientifique published in the issue dated 1 June 1901. Ferber wrote to Chanute, and through him learnt of the experiments of the Wright Brothers, receiving a copy of Wilbur Wright's paper "Some Aeronautical Experiments" which had been published in the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers in December 1901. Ferber then built his fifth aircraft, based on photographs of the Wright's 1901 glider.
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