Charles Renard (November 23, 1847– April 13, 1905) born in Damblain, Vosges, was a French military engineer.
Airships
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 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.
[Hallion 2003, p.87] It was later exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1889).
Preferred numbers
Ca. 1877 he proposed a now widely used system of
known as
Renard numbers that was later reportedly published in an 1886 instruction for
Tethered balloon troops, named after him in the 1920s
and finally became international standard ISO 3. It helped the French army to reduce the number of different balloon
kept on
inventory from 425 to 17.
Road Train
Colonel Renard invented the Renard Road Train first developed by Darracq and displayed by them in 1903 later developed in England by
Daimler Company. 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.
[The Commercial Motor-vehicle And Boat Exhibition. The Times, Monday, 1907-03-11; pg. 4; Issue 38277] They were powered by a 16.1 litre Daimler engine and the last carriage always cut the corner
[Lord Montagu and David Burgess-Wise Daimler Century; Stephens 1995 ]
Academy
Depressed by the French government's refusal to fund his experiments and the rejection of his candidacy for membership of the French
Académie des Sciences he committed suicide in April 1905.
[Hallion 2003, p.88] The
Académie recognized his achievements by the award of the
Prix Plumey for 1902
and the posthumous award of the
Poncelet Prize for 1907.
See also
-
Hallion, Richard P., Taking Flight. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003
External links
