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*An engine designed by a U.S. machinist named Stephen Balzer, who is best remembered for having built the first automobile to run in the streets of New York City.
*Much to Beachey’s chagrin, however, the French aviator Adolphe Pegoud would go down in history as the world’s first aviator to successfully accomplish a single airborne loop on September 21, 1913.
*The term aileron, French for “little wing,” is attributed to aviation pioneer Robert Esnault-Pelterie, who experimented with them on a full-scale glider in 1904.
*Rigid parachutes, or aerodynamic braking devices, as they were sometimes called, developed considerably earlier, however. Their use dates at least to 1783 when, in the first well-recorded instance, Sebastian Lenormand used an umbrellalike contraption to descend safely after jumping from an observation tower in Montpelier, France.
*As with so many other areas of aviation history, this is a matter of some disagreement. British aviation historian Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, tracing the intellectual history of ailerons, suggests that the AEA could have learned of them from a published account of Esnault-Pelterie’s experiments with them in the January 1905 issue the French aviation journal L’Aerophile.
1Adapted from Alden Hatch, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1942).