From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Renard
(1847?1905) born in
Damblain
,
Vosges
, was a French military engineer.
Airships
[
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]
After the
Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-1871 he started work on the design of
airships
at the French army aeronautical department. Together with
Arthur C. Krebs
and his brother Paul, in 1884 he constructed
La France
, which made its
maiden flight
on 9 August 1884 at
Chalais-Meudon
, making a 23-minute circular flight. This was the first time that a flying machine made a flight which returned to the place of take-off.
[1]
It was later exhibited at the Paris
Exposition Universelle (1889)
.
Preferred numbers
[
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]
He also proposed a now widely used system of
preferred numbers
known as
Renard numbers
that was later named after him and became
international standard
ISO 3
. It helped the French army to reduce the number of different balloon
ropes
kept on
inventory
from 425 to 17.
[2]
Road Train
[
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]
Colonel Renard invented the Renard Road Train first developed by
Darracq
and displayed by them in 1903 later developed in England by
Daimler
. The leading motor unit having generated the power transmits it by a continuous shaft united between the carriages by a universal joint to the driving wheels of each carriage. These, each carriage being six-wheeled, are the central pair and are shod with iron, the resulting road-shock being taken by the springs and rubber tyres on the other wheels. Each vehicle is steered by its predecessor through a series of rods and linkages and when a Renard train rounds a corner each vehicle follows precisely in the track of its predecessor.
[3]
They were powered by a 16.1 litre Daimler engine and the last carriage always cut the corner
[4]
Academy
[
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]
Depressed by the French government's refusal to fund his experiments and the rejection of his candidacy for membership of the French
Academie des Sciences
he committed suicide in April 1905.
[5]
The
Academie
recognized his achievements by the award of the
Prix Plumey
for 1902
[6]
and the posthumous award of the
Prix Poncelet
for 1907.
[7]
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- Hallion, Richard P.,
Taking Flight
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003
ISBN
0-1951-6035-5
External links
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]
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