Georges Besançon
Georges Besançon (1866–1934)[1] founded and edited the aeronautical journal L'Aérophile.
Besançon was a ballonist ("aeronaut") and journalist.[2] Besançon helped train the later-celebrated balloonist Salomon Andrée, probably in the late 1880s.[3]
In 1892, Besançon and scientist Gustave Hermite sent instruments on fabric or paper balloons into the upper atmosphere for meteorological research.[4] In 1901, Hermite and Besançon sent up small instrumented rubber balloons that were designed to expand until at a high altitude they would burst. Then their instruments would descend by parachute.[4]
Besançon founded the aeronautical periodical L'Aérophile in 1893, and remained its director until at least 1910.[5] There he covered and reported on the era in which the airplane was invented and an international airplane industry arose.
References
- ↑ University of Michigan library record
- ↑ L'Aérophile Collection Overview, Science References Services of the Library of Congress
- ↑ Czech, Kenneth P. "Swedish-Led Artic [sic] Expedition in a Balloon Led to a Tragic End" at historynet.com, originally from Aviation History magazine
- 1 2 "Early Scientific Balloons" at avstop.com
- ↑ L'Aérophile, Jan 1, 1910 cover at archive.org scanned from Smithsonian Institution Library