L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
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Aime-Salmson
Emmanuel Aime was a mathematics teacher who began working early in the century with Santos-Dumont; later in the 1909 Paris Salon he and Salmson showed their Autoplane, a curious direct-lift biplane consisting of a long slightly up-curved rectangular panel tangent at its center to the top of the arch formed by a similar long panel bowed down at each end. A centrally-mounted engine sat on a skid-equipped frame of steel tubing and drove 2 pusher propellers; and at right angles to them on each side another propeller drove air against the underside of the curved lower wing for lift.
Журнал Flight
Flight, October 16, 1909
AEROPLANES AT THE PARIS SALON (FIRST INSTALMENT).
Aime-Salmson.
Machine which the inventors define as an "autoplane." It is totally unlike any device which has yet flown and is principally interesting on account of the idea it embodies for making the machine self-lifiing, that, is to say, capable of rising off the ground vertically from rest.
For this purpose a pair of arched wings are used beneath the main wings, which are horizontal, and a pair of propellers are arranged to blow air laterally from the centre of the machine on to the arched surfaces. The deflection of the air stream in a downward direction is intended to give an upward reaction of sufficient magnitude to lift the machine bodily; it will be interesting to see whether the practical trials justify this expectation.
Propellers for giving longitudinal motion have their shafts bevel driven from the transverse-shafts of the other screws, and so are always in action. Behind the main horizontal wings are two planes, side by side, which can be deflected into the draught from the two propellers. It is intended to try and steer the machine by the reactions thus set up, and it is anticipated that by deflecting both surfaces simultaneously and then screening both propellers it will be possible to increase the initial lifting effort of the transverse-screws. It is at any rate inadvisable to waste the energy developed in two permanently driven propellers when it comes to trying to lift such a device with a rather limited amount of engine power.