Octave Chanute

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Octave Chanute
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Resting place	Springdale Cemetery, Peoria, Illinois
Citizenship	French, American[1]
Occupation(s)	Civil engineer, railway engineer and bridge designer, aviation pioneer

Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910) was a French-American^[1] civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He advised and publicized many aviation enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers. At his death, he was hailed as the father of aviation and the initial concepts of the heavier-than-air flying machine.^[2]

Early life

Octave Chanut was born in Paris to Elise and Joseph Chanut, professor at the Collège de France. Octave and Joseph emigrated to the United States of America in 1838, when Joseph was named Vice President of Jefferson College in Louisiana. Octave attended private schools in New York. He added the "e" to his last name in his adult life. In 1857, he married Anne Riddell James, with whom he had a son and three daughters.^[3]

Career

Railroad civil engineer

Chanute began his training as a civil engineer in 1848.

He was widely considered brilliant and innovative in the engineering profession. He designed and constructed the two biggest stockyards in the United States, Chicago Stock Yards (1865) and Kansas City Stockyards (1871). He designed and built the Hannibal Bridge with Joseph Tomlinson and George S. Morison. In 1869, this bridge established Kansas City, Missouri as the dominant city in the region, as the first bridge to cross the Missouri River there. He designed many other bridges during his railroad career, including the Illinois River rail bridge at Chillicothe, Illinois,^[4] the Genesee River Gorge rail bridge near Portageville, New York (now in Letchworth State Park), the Sibley Railroad Bridge across the Missouri River at Sibley, Missouri, the Fort Madison Toll Bridge at Fort Madison, Iowa, and the Kinzua Bridge in Pennsylvania.

Pioneer in wood preservation

Chanute established a procedure for pressure-treating wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood's lifespan. Establishing the first commercial plants, he convinced railroad men that it was advantageous to expend funds treating ties to extend their service life, thus reducing replacement costs. To monitor the longevity of railroad ties and other wooden items, he introduced the railroad date nail in the United States.

Chanute retired from the Erie Railway in 1883 to become an independent engineering consultant.

Aviation pioneer

hang glider is a trailblazing design adapted by the Wright brothers, who "contrived a system consisting of two large surfaces on the Chanute double-deck plan".^[5]

St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, about to launch a glider

designed by Chanute.

Chanute became interested in aviation after watching a balloon ascend in

aviation research published up to that time.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Chanute collaborated with Albert Zahm to organize a highly successful International Conference on Aerial Navigation.

Chanute was too old to fly, so he partnered with younger experimenters, including

, which was familiar to him from his bridge-building work. The Wright brothers based their glider designs on the Chanute "double-decker", as they called it. A new design of a biplane glider was developed and flown in 1897.

Chanute corresponded with many aviation pioneers, including

, but he was killed in a glider crash in October 1899 before he could attempt to fly it.

In 1900, Wilbur Wright read Progress in Flying Machines and contacted Chanute. Chanute helped to publicize the Wright brothers' work and provided consistent encouragement, visiting their camp near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The Wrights and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters between 1900 and 1910.^[9]

Chanute freely shared his knowledge about aviation with anyone who was interested, and expected others to do the same. He encouraged colleagues to patent their inventions. His open approach led to friction with the Wright brothers, who believed their ideas about aircraft control were unique and refused to share them. Chanute did not believe that the Wright flying machine patent, premised on wing warping, could be enforced and said so publicly, including a newspaper interview in which he said, "I admire the Wrights. I feel friendly toward them for the marvels they have achieved, but you can easily gauge how I feel concerning their attitude at present by the remark I made to Wilbur Wright recently. I told him I was sorry to see they were suing other experimenters and abstaining from entering the contests and competitions in which other men are brilliantly winning laurels. I told him that in my opinion they are wasting valuable time over lawsuits which they ought to concentrate in their work. Personally, I do not think that the courts will hold that the principle underlying the warping tips can be patented."^[10] The friendship was still impaired when Chanute died, but Wilbur Wright attended Chanute's memorial service at the family's home. Wright wrote a eulogy that was read at the Aero Club meeting in January 1911.

When the Aero Club of Illinois was founded on February 10, 1910, Chanute was its first president until his death.^[11][12]

Death

Chanute died on November 23, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, after battling pneumonia. Wilbur Wright attended his funeral in his honor.^[13]

Commemoration

Wright Brothers and their pioneering Wright Flyer

.

The town of Chanute, Kansas,^[14] is named after Chanute. Three small towns in southeast Kansas were vying for the railroad's land office and Chanute suggested that they incorporate, to make the larger town more attractive to the railroad. The former Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul, Illinois, was decommissioned in 1993 and converted to peacetime endeavors. The former base included the former Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum, which detailed the history of aviation and of Chanute Air Force Base.

In 1902, the

.

In 1963, Chanute was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.^[15]

In 1974, Chanute was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.^[16]

In 1978, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated Octave Chanute with a pair of 21-cent airmail stamps.

In 1996, the National Soaring Museum honored the 100th anniversary of the glider flying experiments in the sand dunes along Lake Michigan as National Landmark of Soaring No. 8.

, has an off-campus residence hall, the Chanute Complex. for upper-class students.

The

George Washington Maher

.

He is represented in the

Patents

U.S. patents

• U.S. patent 61,397, Rolling Track Irons
• U.S. patent 98,848, Dredging Machine (Octave Chanute & George S. Morrison)
• U.S. patent 430,068, Preserving timber structure
• U.S. patent 582,718, Soaring Machine
• U.S. patent 582,757, Means for Aerial Flight, Chanute filed the patent on behalf of Louis Mouillard, with one-half assigned to Chanute.
• U.S. patent 606,187, Soaring Machine, William Paul Butusov, Chanute collaborated and paid for the patent process and was assigned one-half.
• U.S. patent 688,932, Process of Preserving Wood
• U.S. patent 834,658, Means for Aerial Flight (or glider launcher).

U.K. patents

• 13372 (flying machine, c. 1897)
• 13373 (flying machine, c. 1897
• 15221 (flying machine, c. 1897

Canadian patents

• 34507, Process of Preserving Wood Artificially against Decay

Timeline

Timeline

See also

• Octave Chanute Award
• The "Pioneer Era" (1900–1914) of Aviation history

References

1. ^
   ISBN 9780393013856
   .
2. ^ ^{a b} "The Death Of Octave Chanute". Popular Mechanics. January 1911. p. 38.
3. ^ "Part 1—Octave Chanute, The Father of Aviation". chicagology.com. Retrieved 2023-03-20.
4. ISBN 978-1-4000-6561-5
   .
5. ^ "Wright: Aeronautical Experiments". invention.psychology.msstate.edu.
6. ^ "Progress in Flying Machines: Conclusion". invention.psychology.msstate.edu.
7. ^ Octave, Chanute (1887). "Aerial navigation". The Railroad and Engineering Journal. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
8. ISBN 0-486-29981-3
   .
9. ^ McFarland, Marvin W., ed. (2001) [1953]. The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Vol. I and II. McGraw-Hill.
10. ^ Octave Chanute (1910-01-23). "Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, Dayton, Chicago, January 23, 1910". Retrieved 2011-02-12.
11. ISBN 0-87580-311-3
    , page 54.
12. ISBN 0-87580-311-3
    , page 36.
13. ^ Clark, Anders (2016-06-22). "Octave Chanute: From Railroad Engineer to The Father of Aviation". Disciples of Flight. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
14. ISBN 9781418553814
    .
15. ^ "Enshrinee Octave Chanute". nationalaviation.org. National Aviation Hall of Fame. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
16. ISBN 978-1-57864-397-4
    .
17. ^ "Frieze of American History | Architect of the Capitol". www.aoc.gov.

Bibliography

• Text of Progress in Flying Machines
• Progress in Flying Machines By Octave Chanute, Courier Dover Publications, reprint 1997 of 1894 original. At Google books.
• World Book Encyclopedia
• Octave Chanute, 1832-1910. Obituary in
  Flight
  . 3 December 1910
• Simine Short. 2011. Locomotive to Aeromotive: Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution. University of Illinois Press.
  OCLC 785781240
• Simine Short: Flight Not Improbable. Octave Chanute and the Worldwide Race Toward Flight. Springer Biographies, Cham 2023.
  ISBN 978-3-031-24429-2

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Octave Chanute.

• Works by Octave Chanute at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Octave Chanute at Internet Archive
• Progress in Flying Machines
• (Fiddlersgreen.net) history, photos, paper model
• A comprehensive look at Chanute's glider flying experiments in 1896 in northern Indiana
• Flights Before the Wrights, Octave Chanute: aeronautical pioneer, engineer and teacher
• Octave Chanute at Find a Grave
• Locomotive to Aeromotive