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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0603.PDF
OCTOBER 2, 1909. PARIS FLIGHT SHOW, FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AN ARTISTIC AND FASCINATING DISPLAY. IF one wants seriously to study the current Aero Exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, the thing cannot be done in a matter of a day or two. In like fashion, so important a display cannot be dismissed in a single issue of FLIGHT, though every page in that issue were devoted to it. Therefore, the more convenient way to treat the matter will be to give a general impression of the Exhibition this week, and to proceed to a study of details in subsequent issues. Happily for those who were unaware last week of the really representative nature of the gathering together of all manner of things pertaining to aeronautics, the doors of the Grand Palais will remain open for a fortnight more, and throughout the Tuvisy meeting, which commences in a couple of days. The first thing that struck one on approaching the building at 10 o'clock on Saturday morning last, when President Armand Fallieres was due to open it, was that, whereas it took about three-quarters of an hour to get to the turnstile where admission was free by ticket of invitation, you could walk in solitary splendour to the five franc entrance turnstile, and the men who took the money seemed absolutely amazed that anybody should be such a fool to pay when seemingly everybody in Paris had been invited to attend the show free of charge. One supposes the notion of the organisers in making quite sure that there should be a throng at the opening of this exhibition was a laudable one. Certainly it achieved the object of enabling an announcement to be made that over 100,000 people had visited the Show by Monday last. But the interest the French public takes in aeronautics is sufficiently healthy and wide-spread to have justified greater pluck on the part of the promoters, who were seemingly scared by the ingenious and scarcely patriotic piece of enterprise of certain individuals who succeeded, quite unexpectedly, in bringing off the Avia- tion Meeting in Berlin, at least as far as securing the ser- vices of the leading flying men is concerned. Incidentally, while paper was flying about, it is somewhat amusing to notice that whereas the organising committee knew quite well to what papers and addresses to send out all their paragraphs for the favour of publication, somehow or other they forgot those names and addresses when Press tickets were being issued. Of course, one had many times, too, the amusing experience of going up and inquir- ing concerning some details of a given machine with a view to publishing some account of them, and being regarded as a lunatic, because in France they cannot imagine anybody publishing one line of an article about any product for the mere sake of the general interest that may repose in it, and without any payment. On the other hand, in about fifty per cent, of cases the amusing lunacy of the British Press was evidently beginning to be PARIS FLIGHT SALON.—View looking down the Grand Palais. The machines seen prominently in the stands are—on the right a Chauviere (makers of the famous propellers), a Vlntlon helicoptere, and then two Bleriots; on the left side are a Dutheil'Chalmers biplane, a "WX.D." monoplane, the Henriot monoplane, and two Antoinettes. Hanging from thetool is the gas'bag of one of the Zodiac dirigibles, and in the far distance the great yellow spherical balloon of the Continental Co. 609
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