Henri Farman was born in Paris on May 26th, 1874. His
first honors were as a bicycle racer and later as an
auto racing champion.
Farman learned to fly in a Voisin aircraft and shortly
thereafter ordered his own modified craft. After
delivery, he continued to modify the design with a series
of intuitive rather than scientific changes. These were
the first steps in a long career in which Henri Farman
diagnosed and solved a myriad of aircraft control and
structural problems.
Having learned the requirement for greater lateral control
in his prize-winning flight at the Arch-deacon competition
in 1908, Farman fitted his aircraft with the first
effective ailerons thereby providing his contemporaries
with the solution to the enormously difficult and dangerous
problem of lateral control.
His later successes in aircraft design and production helped
to keep France at the forefront of European aviation until
his death in 1958.
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