Louis Bleriot Learn English through story level 3

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louis blerio

the first person to cross the sea in an

aeroplane

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i was the first person to cross the sea

from france to england

in a heavier-than-air flying machine

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i was born in the town of cambre in

france

on the first of july 1872

i went to school in my hometown then in

amiens

and finally in paris as a boy

i was especially good at drawing my

ambition was to become an engineer

when i left the famous ecole central in

paris

i had to join the french army all young

men had to do some military service at

that time

and i was a soldier for a year

after that i took a job with an

engineering company in paris

while i was working there i invented

something new

it was a practical kind of headlamp for

the first cars which were appearing in

france at that time

in 1897 i left the engineering company

and i started a company of my own

i sold my headlamps to famous car makers

like renault

my company was successful and in 1901

i was able to marry a beautiful woman

called alice feder

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i’d been interested in aviation when i

was a student

but during the great exhibition in paris

in 1900

my interest became stronger

at the exhibition i saw a kind of

aeroplane called aviel

iii it had been built by an inventor

named clement

that machine didn’t succeed in flying

but it made me

think about flying machines my headlamp

company was earning a lot of money

so i used some of it to build airplanes

myself

my ambition was to make heavier-than-air

machines which could

fly i wanted machines that didn’t need

gas inside them fortunately

small light engines had recently been

invented

my machines needed engines like that i

thought

one of my first designs in 1900

was a machine which i called the

ornithopter i made several of these

machines

the ornithopter had engines and it was

meant to fly

like a bird with wings which moved

unfortunately

none of the machines worked they didn’t

work because the design was wrong

the moving wings were a mistake so next

i started to think about fixed-wing

aeroplanes

perhaps the movement of the air over the

fixed wings could keep an airplane in

the sky

i established a company with a man named

gabrielle vuazer

vuezer had already worked on fixed-wing

airplanes but they were gliders

these airplanes had no engines so they

had to take off from high places

now we needed to make machines with

engines to pull them forward

and pull them up into the sky

in 1905 and 1906 waza and i built

several airplanes

by this time the wright brothers in

america had already flown

in a heavier-than-air flying machine

with engines

but the machines that i built with waza

didn’t work well

the pilots who tried to fly them weren’t

happy

they said that the machines were

dangerous

i was wasting my money while i was

working with waza

soon i left the company and i started

working alone again

the result was the first successful

monoplane

the monoplane had a single wing it

wasn’t like the biplane the two-winged

design that the wright brothers used

i built several monoplanes each one with

changes to its design

and from each machine i learned

something new

the blerio 5 model for example

flew a short distance but it was

unstable

and it crashed but when i built model 11

i’d solved most of the problems this

model was much more stable in the air

my new aeroplane could fly but how far

could it travel

could it cross the english channel the

sea between

england and france this was my ambition

people had flown across the channel in

balloons of course

this had first happened in 1784

but it was the gas inside the balloons

that kept them in the air

my dream was to fly from france to

england

in a heavier-than-air machine

many people told me that it wasn’t

possible

but their doubts made me work harder

the english channel is about 35

kilometers wide at the narrowest place

that isn’t very far but until

1909 it was difficult to keep our

airplanes in the air for more than a few

minutes

however in that year i thought that my

newest machine

could succeed was one way to find out

whether i was right

there was a good reason to make the

attempt then

a london newspaper the daily mail had

offered a prize of one

thousand pounds the money was for the

first person whose airplane made the

crossing

there were two other people competing

for the prize

one of them had already made his first

attempt

his engine had failed and he landed in

the sea

fortunately he was rescued the other

competitor’s aeroplane crashed during a

test flight

and he was hurt

on the 25th of july 1909 when i was

ready to make my own attempt

i was in pain i’d recently crashed one

of my aeroplanes and burned my foot

the pain was bad but i decided to fly

that day

i took off from an airfield in france at

about 4 30 in the morning

i needed to ascend quickly because there

were some telegraph wires at the end of

the field

i had to get my machine safely above

them

my airplane had a 25 horsepower engine

was that enough

i hoped that it was

the takeoff was good and soon i was

flying

over the water at about 70 kilometers

per hour

but the weather changed and it was hard

to see anything around me

to be safe i flew my machine about 75

meters above

the water it seemed a long time before i

saw the english coast below me

but in fact the whole flight took just

37 minutes

it was good to see the english airfield

ahead of me

the strong wind made it hard to land my

machine

i decided to stop my engine and float

down to earth

because of this i didn’t have much

control of the airplane

and i touched the ground hard

the machine was damaged a little as a

result but i’d succeeded

i’d flown across the channel

i continued to design airplanes during

the next years

and in 1914 they became much more

important

that year the first world war began

britain and france both fought against

germany

by then i was the director of a large

aeroplane company

and i had built over 800 machines

although the technology was still new

and there were many crashes

aeroplanes were very useful during the

war

i moved my company to england during the

war

and i stayed there for some years after

it we built cars as well as airplanes

i started several flying schools in

england too

but when i was in my 50s i decided to

retire after that

although i stopped flying my interest in

aviation continued

it was good to see other pilots break

records

and attempt long flights for the first

time

in 1927 charles lindbergh

crossed the atlantic ocean flying alone

and i was in france to welcome him when

he landed

and i continued to advise governments

about military aviation

until my death in paris on the 1st of

august 1936

in that year the federation aeronautique

internationale

established the louis blerio medal in my

honor

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