Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Fusion world | Innovative approaches and how ITER can help

    More than 30 private fusion companies from around the world attended ITER's inaugural Private Sector Fusion Workshop in May 2024. Four of them participated in a [...]

    Read more

  • Robert Aymar (1936-2024) | A vision turned into reality

    Robert Aymar, who played a key role in the development of fusion research in France and worldwide, and who headed the ITER project for 10 years (1993-2003) befo [...]

    Read more

  • The ITER community | United in a common goal

    Gathered on the ITER platform for a group photo (the first one since 2019, in pre-Covid times) the crowd looks impressive. Although several hundred strong, it r [...]

    Read more

  • Vacuum vessel | Europe completes first of five sectors

    The ITER assembly teams are gearing up to receive a 440-tonne machine component shipped from Italy—sector #5, the first of five vacuum vessel sectors expected f [...]

    Read more

  • SOFT 2024 | Dublin conference highlights progress and outstanding challenges

    Nestled in the residential suburb of Glasnevin, Dublin City University is a fairly young academic institution. When it opened its doors in 1980 it had just 200 [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

Region celebrates first seaplane flight

The first seaplane in history took off from the waters of Étang de Berre one hundred years ago, on 28 March 1910. (Click to view larger version...)
The first seaplane in history took off from the waters of Étang de Berre one hundred years ago, on 28 March 1910.
Seaplanes are the dinosaurs of commercial aviation history. They once ruled the skies but became almost extinct during the course of evolution.

The first seaplane in history took off from the waters of Étang de Berre one hundred years ago, on 28 March 1910. It was a frail-looking machine equipped with a small 50 HP engine. Its designer and pilot, an engineer from Marseille named Henri Fabre, rode it astride, as if riding a winged horse.

Pegasus, however, was not the name Henri Fabre chose for his "hydro-aeroplane." The 27-year old engineer preferred to name his invention Le Canard (The Duck).

On that first flight, Le Canard flew a distance of about 500 metres, twice as far as the Wright brothers' aeroplane seven years earlier at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. On the same day, Fabre, who had never flown before, not even as a passenger, performed five other flights and made an elegant landing—or "alighting" which is more proper for seaplanes—in the Martigues marina.

Unaware that it was paying homage to Henri Fabre, Pan American Airlines opened the world's first transatlantic passenger service in 1939, between New York and Marseille. (Click to view larger version...)
Unaware that it was paying homage to Henri Fabre, Pan American Airlines opened the world's first transatlantic passenger service in 1939, between New York and Marseille.
Henri Fabre, whose feat will be celebrated throughout the region this week-end, opened the way for long-distance commercial flight. A good decade before regular aircrafts, seaplanes were to venture across the transatlantic route.

Unaware that it was paying homage to Henri Fabre, Pan American Airlines opened the world's first transatlantic passenger service in 1939, between New York and Marseille. And just as Le Canard had done 29 years earlier, the fabled Yankee Clipper, Boeing's 74-passenger luxury "flying boat", would land on and take off from the waters of Étang de Berre.



return to the latest published articles