ALBERT OCTAVE ETÉVÉ 1880-1976

SAPEURS - AÉROSTIERS 2. Transport du ballon au treuil par les tirandes (cordes de manoeuvres) SAPPERS - AÉROSTIERS 2. Transport of the balloon to the winch by the tirandes (cords of operations)       Collection of Ian Sayer, 10-13-06

 

CARTE POSTAL      This is the reverse side of the postcard above. As you can see, it bears the autographs of five pioneer balloonists. If you recognize any of these, please contact us. Thank you very much. Collection of Ian Sayer, 10-13-06

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES via email from Dave Lam, 11-2-06 Ralph,      This is an interesting card, because the back identifies the people as "dirigeable pilots", which is not the kind of balloon shown on the front. Ah well, I don't have lists of the balloon pilots, but... #5 is, I think, Albert Etévé who was also an airplane pilot. French License #89, and during WWI and after became a very important person in the French Air Arm. He was the Inspector General of Aeronautics.       He started in the battalion des sapeurs-aerostiers in 1905, and earned his free balloon pilot license (as on this card) in 1907. In February 1910, he earned his dirigeable balloon pilot's license.       He earned his airplane license 10 June 1910. He flew the first airplane delivered to the French Air Force, and invented an automatic stabiliser as well as various gun mounts, speed indicators, and other assorted pieces of equipment. See his book "La Victoire des Cocardes", Robert Laffont, Paris, 1970.      Sorry I can't help with the others. Dave

ONLINE RESOURCES      If you search for "Albert Etévé", using the Google search engine, (11-3-06), you will find about 64 links. Among the most helpful are the following.

Etévé, Albert Octave (1880-1976) X1900      This page on the Bibliotech Central website of the Ecole Polytechnique offers a very nice biography of Etévé. The text is in French, but a machine-translated version is available here: English Version      If you read French, you can access the original article by clicking on the title above.

 

Albert Etévé - Wikipédia      This page on Wikipedia displays a drawing of the anemometer which Etévé invented. It also has a link to the photograph of him which you will find on the website cited above. You can access the page, in French, by clicking on the title above.,

 

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