Guillaume Joseph Gabriel De La Landelle

Personal

Vocation

French naval officer, journalist, man of letters, novelist, and maritime author. He was also one of the pioneers of aviation. In 1861 he built, with Gustave Ponton d'Amécourt, a prototype of a steam engine helicopter. The helicopter of the hero in Robur le conquérant (Robur the Conqueror) by Jules Verne (1886), has many similarities with that of Landelle. The latter then founded, with Nadar and Ponton d'Amécourt in 1863, Société d'encouragement pour la locomotion aérienne au moyen d’appareils plus lourds que l'air (Trust for aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air). He also published several books on the history of aeronautics, where he summarizes the first flights of Jean-Marie Le Bris. La Landelle was the first person to use the word 'aviation' in his 1863 book Aviation, ou Navigation aérienne (sans ballons) (Aviation and Air Navigation (without balloons)). He died from tuberculosis on 19 January 1886 in Paris. Link to Wikipedia biography (French)