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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