Louis Bl%C3%A9riot

Louis Charles Joseph Blriot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for trucks and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. In 1909 he became world famous for making the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft, winning the prize of 1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. Blriot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. and the founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company.

Born at No.17h rue de lArbre Poires in Cambrai, Louis was the first of five children born to Clmence and Charles Blriot. At the age of 10, Blriot was sent as a boarder to the Institut Notre Dame in Cambrai, where he frequently won class prizes, including one for drawing. When he was 15, he moved on to the Lyce at Amiens, where he lived with an aunt. After passing the exams for his baccalaureate in science and German, he determined to try to enter the prestigious cole Centrale in Paris. Entrance was by a demanding exam for which special tuition was necessary consequently Blriot spent a year at the Collge SainteBarbe in Paris. He passed the exam, placing 74th among the 243 successful candidates, and doing especially well in the tests of drawing ability. After three years of demanding study at the cole Centrale, Blriot graduated 113th of 203 in his graduating class. He then embarked on a term of compulsory military service, and spent a year as a sublieutenant in the 24th Artillery Regim

Source: Wikipedia