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Bleriot XI

Bleriot XI
Frenchman Louis Blériot began manufacturing airplanes near Paris in 1905. Though his first company failed after only one year, Blériot persevered, experimenting with aircraft designs of various configurations, including his 1907 Blériot V, the world's first practical monoplane. In October 1908, London's Daily Mail newspaper announced a £1000-prize to the first pilot to fly across the English Channel. Though his aircraft had never run for more than twenty minutes - about half of the Channel's 22-mile distance - Blériot jumped at the chance. His new Blériot XI, which he unveiled on Christmas Eve 1908, featured a new engine from Italian Alessandro Anzani. The Anzani had one key virtue; it could run continuously for an hour. On July 25, 1909, Blériot took off from the French coast near Calais and headed across the English Channel, landing in England 37 minutes later. While Blériot's feat delighted the French, it worried the English, who realized they had suddenly become vulnerable to air attack. Sir Alan Cobham wrote, "The day Blériot flew the Channel marked the end of our insular safety, and the beginning of the time when Britain must seek another form of defense besides ships." The Blériot XI design was not lost on America, where an enterprising manufacturer, the Queen Aeroplane Co. of New York, began building and selling it in 1910. The Blériot XI continued making news, winning three of Europe's major long-distance air races in 1911. Over 800 were produced between 1909 and 1914, making it the firs commercially successful monoplane.

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