Voisin-Farman I

Voisin-Farman I, aircraft built by the French aeronautical pioneer Gabriel Voisin for the French aviator Henri Farman in 1907.

(Read Orville Wright’s 1929 biography of his brother, Wilbur.)

Like the Wright brothers’ aircraft, the earliest powered Voisin airplanes were pusher biplanes with elevators located forward of the wings. The first of these machines, completed in March 1907 and sold to engineer and aeronaut Henry Kapferer, never flew. The basic Voisin configuration emerged in their second aircraft, sold to Ferdinand Léon Delagrange. Known as the Voisin-Delagrange I, it was the first Voisin machine to leave the ground, completing six flights, the best of which covered 60 metres (almost 200 feet) in 6 seconds. (After some further modifications, it eventually flew for 500 metres [1,640 feet] in 40 seconds.)

Farman, an art student who earned fame as a bicycle racer and as an automobile racer, ordered the third powered Voisin airplane on June 1, 1907. Farman made some 20 flights from Issy-les-Moulineaux between Sept. 30 and Nov. 23, 1907. On the best of those flights (November 10), he covered 1,030 metres (3,380 feet) in 1 minute 14 seconds. It was the first time that a machine other than a Wright brothers’ airplane had remained in the air for more than a minute and the first time that a European airplane had completed a full circle. The flight also earned Farman the Deutsch-Archdeacon Cup for the first officially witnessed flight of 150 metres (490 feet). See also flight, history of.