Victor Tatin

Who was Victor Tatin?

Victor Tatin was a French inventor, who created an early airplane, the Aéroplane in 1879. The craft was the first model aeroplane to lift itself by its own power after a run on the ground.

The model had a span of 1.90 m and weighed 1.8 kg. It had twin propellers and was powered by a compressed-air engine. The plane was tried on a circular track at the military facilities of Chalais-Meudon. Tethered to a central pole by a string so that it could rotate, it ran with its own power and took off as it was running at a speed of 8 metres per second. In 1890 Tatin and Charles Richet experimented on a steam powered aeroplane with fore and aft propellors and in 1911 he collaborated with Louis Paulhan on the design of the Aéro-Torpille, a monoplane with a remarkably streamlined design.