The Blériot VIII was a French pioneer era aeroplane built by Louis Blériot, significant for its adoption of both a configuration and a control system that were to set a standard for decades to come.

Design and development

The previous year, Blériot had experimented with a

tandem wing QAC Quickie Q2 A tandem wing is a wing configuration in which a flying craft or animal has two or more sets of wings set one behind another. All the wings contribute to lift. The tandem wing is distinct from the biplane in which the wings are ...

design, the

Blériot VI The Blériot VI "Libellule" ("Dragonfly"), was built in 1907 and was one of the series of experimental aircraft built by Louis Blériot which eventually led to the Blériot XI aircraft in which he made the first flight across the English Channel. ...

, then built another aircraft, the Blériot VII, in which the rear wing was somewhat smaller than the front wing, and introduced the later Type XI's "bedstead", shock-absorbing and castoring main landing gear design. In the Blériot VIII, he reduced the size of the rear wing yet again, to the point where it was no longer contributing much in the way of lift, but had become the

horizontal stabiliser A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplan ...

. More novel was his adoption of a single

control stick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

that would control both

roll Roll or Rolls may refer to: Movement about the longitudinal axis * Roll angle (or roll rotation), one of the 3 angular degrees of freedom of any stiff body (for example a vehicle), describing motion about the longitudinal axis ** Roll (aviation) ...

and pitch, while the

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adve ...

was controlled by a horizontal, centrally pivoted bar swung by the pilot's feet. A similar control arrangement for roll and pitch control had been incorporated into an aircraft the previous year by

Robert Esnault-Pelterie Robert Albert Charles Esnault-Pelterie (8 November 1881 – 6 December 1957) was a French aircraft designer and spaceflight theorist. He is referred to as being one of the founders of modern rocketry and astronautics, along with the Russian Kons ...

, but the Bleriot VIII was the first use in a single airframe of the combination of hand/arm-operated joystick and foot-operated rudder control, that is in use to the present day, for the basic format of aerodynamic aircraft control systems. Blériot found that the new aircraft flew very well, and for the first time he had sufficient control to fly in circles. He could also keep it aloft for up to eight minutes at a time. During the course of 1908, he modified it a number of times, calling the first major revision the VIII-''bis'' and the next the VIII-''ter''. With this aircraft on June 29, Blériot claimed the second of three prizes being offered by the ''

Automobile Club de France The Automobile Club of France (french: Automobile Club de France, links=no) (ACF) is a men's club founded on November 12, 1895 by Albert de Dion, Paul Meyan, and its first president, the Dutch-born Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nijevelt. The Auto ...

'' for a flight with an altitude of . Longer and longer flights followed: on October 21, he made one of , and ten days later flew cross-country from

Toury Toury () is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. Toury station has rail connections to Orléans, Étampes and Paris. Population History On 31 October 1908 Louis Blériot succeeded in making a cross-country flight, maki ...

to Artenay and flew back again.

Specifications (VIII-''ter'')

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * * * * Devaux, Jean and Michel Marani. "Les Douze Premiers Aéroplanes de Louis Blériot". ''Pegase'' No 54, May 1989.

External links

Nova: A Daring Flight

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bleriot 08 1900s French experimental aircraft 8 High-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1908