Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910) was a French-American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He advised and helped promote many aviation enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers. At his death, he was called the father of aviation and the first person to develop the early ideas for a heavier-than-air flying machine.

Early life

Octave Chanute was born in Paris to Elise and Joseph Chanut, a professor at the Collège de France. Joseph Chanut moved to the United States of America in 1838 when he was named Vice President of Jefferson College in Louisiana. Octave attended private schools in New York. Later in life, he added an "e" to his last name. In 1857, he married Anne Riddell James. Together, they had one son and three daughters.

Career

Chanute started his training as a civil engineer in 1848. He was known for his smart and creative ideas in engineering. He designed and built the two largest stockyards in the United States, the Chicago Stock Yards (1865) and the Kansas City Stockyards (1871). He worked with Joseph Tomlinson and George S. Morison to design and build the Hannibal Bridge. In 1869, this bridge helped Kansas City, Missouri, become the most important city in the region because it was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River there. During his railroad career, he also designed several other bridges, including the Illinois River rail bridge in Chillicothe, Illinois; the Genesee River Gorge rail bridge near Portageville, New York (now in Letchworth State Park); the Sibley Railroad Bridge across the Missouri River in Sibley, Missouri; the Fort Madison Toll Bridge in Fort Madison, Iowa; and the Kinzua Bridge in Pennsylvania.

Chanute created a method to treat wooden railroad ties with chemicals to protect them from damage. He started the first commercial plants to do this and showed railroad companies that spending money on treating ties would save costs in the long run by reducing the need for replacements. To track how long railroad ties lasted, he introduced the railroad date nail in the United States.

Chanute left the Erie Railway in 1883 to work as an independent engineering consultant.

…we hope that the success of a flying machine, which seems far away but is thought to be possible, will bring only good things to the world. We hope it will shorten distances, make all parts of the world easier to reach, bring people closer together, help society grow, and bring a time of peace and kindness for everyone.

Chanute became interested in flying after seeing a balloon rise in Peoria, Illinois, in 1856. After retiring from his railroad job in 1883, he spent some of his free time studying aviation. Using his engineering skills, he collected information about flying experiments from around the world and combined it with his earlier knowledge as a civil engineer. He shared his findings in articles published in The Railroad and Engineering Journal from 1891 to 1893. These articles were later published in a book called Progress in Flying Machines in 1894. This book was the most detailed worldwide review of research on fixed-wing flying machines at that time.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Chanute worked with Albert Zahm to organize a successful International Conference on Aerial Navigation.

Chanute was too old to fly himself, so he worked with younger experimenters, including Augustus M. Herring and William Avery. In 1896, Chanute, Herring, and Avery tested a design based on the work of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal and their own hang gliders. The tests took place on the dunes near Lake Michigan, near Miller Beach, Indiana, which is now part of Gary. These experiments showed Chanute that adding multiple wings could help increase lift without making the machine too heavy. This idea was first suggested by British engineer Francis Herbert Wenham in 1866 and used in flight by Lilienthal in the 1890s. Chanute developed a wing structure with supports and wires that was used in future powered biplanes. This design was not seriously challenged until the 1910s when Hugo Junkers created all-metal planes without external bracing. Chanute’s "interplane strut" design was based on the Pratt truss, a structure he had used in building bridges. The Wright brothers used Chanute’s "double-decker" biplane design for their gliders. A new biplane glider was built and tested in 1897.

Chanute communicated with many aviation pioneers, including Otto Lilienthal, Louis Pierre Mouillard, Gabriel Voisin, John J. Montgomery, Louis Blériot, Ferdinand Ferber, Lawrence Hargrave, and Alberto Santos Dumont. In 1897, he began writing with British aviator Percy Pilcher. Pilcher built a triplane based on Chanute’s ideas but died in a glider crash in October 1899 before he could test it.

In 1900, Wilbur Wright read Progress in Flying Machines and contacted Chanute. Chanute helped promote the Wright brothers’ work and visited their camp near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The Wrights and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters between 1900 and 1910.

Chanute shared his knowledge about aviation freely with anyone interested and encouraged others to do the same. He supported colleagues in patenting their inventions. His open approach caused disagreements with the Wright brothers, who believed their ideas about controlling airplanes were unique and refused to share them. Chanute disagreed with the Wrights’ patent, which was based on wing warping, and said so publicly. He told Wilbur Wright that he was sorry the Wrights were suing other experimenters and avoiding competitions where others won recognition. He believed the courts would not support the Wrights’ patent. Although their friendship was damaged, Wilbur Wright attended Chanute’s memorial service at his family home. Wright wrote a tribute that was read at an Aero Club meeting in January 1911.

When the Aero Club of Illinois was founded on February 10, 1910, Chanute became its first president and held the position until his death.

Death

Chanute died on November 23, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, after fighting pneumonia. Wilbur Wright attended his funeral to honor him.

Commemoration

The town of Chanute, Kansas, was named after Octave Chanute. Three small towns in southeast Kansas were competing for the railroad's land office. Chanute suggested that they combine to form a larger town, which would be more appealing to the railroad.

The former Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul, Illinois, was established in 1917 by the U.S. Army as Chanute Field. The base was closed in 1993 and used for peaceful purposes. One of these purposes was the now-closed Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum, which displayed the history of Chanute Air Force Base and aviation in general. The museum included a replica of Chanute's 1896 glider. The former base location is now called the Chanute Field Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1902, the Western Society of Engineers began giving the Octave Chanute Award for papers that showed important engineering innovations. From 1939 to 2005, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented the Chanute Flight Award to recognize outstanding contributions by pilots or test personnel to the development of aeronautics.

In 1963, Octave Chanute was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio. In 1974, he was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. In 1978, the U.S. Postal Service honored Chanute with a pair of 21-cent airmail stamps.

In 1996, the National Soaring Museum recognized the 100th anniversary of Chanute's glider flying experiments in the sand dunes near Lake Michigan as National Landmark of Soaring No. 8.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, has an off-campus residence hall called the Chanute Complex for upper-class students.

The Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium in Gary, Indiana, includes a museum dedicated to Octave Chanute and the Tuskegee Airmen. The historic bathing pavilion at the site was designed by architect George Washington Maher.

Octave Chanute is featured in the Frieze of American History detail titled The Birth of Aviation, which is displayed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

Patents

• U.S. patent 61,397: Rolling Track Irons
• U.S. patent 98,848: Dredging Machine (Octave Chanute & George S. Morrison)
• U.S. patent 430,068: Preserving timber structure
• U.S. patent 582,718: Soaring Machine
• U.S. patent 582,757: Means for Aerial Flight, Chanute filed the patent on behalf of Louis Mouillard, with one-half assigned to Chanute.
• U.S. patent 606,187: Soaring Machine, William Paul Butusov, Chanute collaborated and paid for the patent process and was assigned one-half.
• U.S. patent 688,932: Process of Preserving Wood
• U.S. patent 834,658: Means for Aerial Flight (or glider launcher).

• 13372 (flying machine, c. 1897)
• 13373 (flying machine, c. 1897)
• 15221 (flying machine, c. 1897)

• 34507, Process of Preserving Wood Artificially against Decay