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  • Magnet technology | 1,000 experts convene in nearby Aix-en-Provence

    The cultural heart of Aix-en-Provence, France—a triangle formed by theatre (Le Grand Théatre), dance (Le Pavillon noir) and music (Le Conservatoire) hubs—became [...]

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  • Safety Day | From phone straps to neuroscience

    The setting, the action, the small groups strolling from stand to stand ... it all felt like a village fair. Visitors could play ping-pong, maneuver toy forklif [...]

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  • ITER Members | Director-General Barabaschi visits China

    During his first visit to China as the head of the ITER Project, Director-General Pietro Barabaschi met with members of government, leaders in innovation, and t [...]

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  • Symposium | How to accelerate fusion development?

    At the 15th edition of the International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain), ITER presented its mission as not only releva [...]

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  • Image of the Week | Sector #8 on the move

    After spending just about one year in vertical tooling, vacuum vessel sector #8 has been returned to a horizontal orientation for removal from the Assembly Hall [...]

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Of Interest

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ITER NEWSLINE -

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.

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