Octave Chanute was the leading American civil engineer and aeronautical pioneer.
Background
Octave Chanute was born in Paris, France on Feburary 18, 1832. He was the son of Elise and Joseph Chanut, professor at the Collège de France. He emigrated with his father to the United States of America in 1838, when the former was named Vice-President at Jefferson College in Louisiana.
Education
Octave attended private schools in New York.
Career
Chanute went to work for the Hudson River Railroad at the age of 17, and in 1863 became chief engineer of the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Chanute's design for the Union Stock Yards in Chicago was accepted as the best in a competition in 1867, and he supervised the construction of this project. He successfully completed the first bridge over the Missouri River at Kansas City in July 1869. From 1870 to 1883 he was chief engineer of the Erie Railroad; meanwhile, he studied the need for a rapid transit system in New York City and wrote a report recommending four elevated lines. His recommendations were substantially carried out later. Chanute resigned from the Erie Railroad in 1883 and opened an office in Kansas City as a consulting engineer. He moved to Chicago in 1889. Chanute had been interested in aeronautics as early as 1874, but the pressure of other work forced him to lay aside his aeronautical studies until after his move to Chicago. He began gliding experiments with a multiplane glider on the sand dunes of northern Indiana. The multiplane glider was later replaced by a biplane. Because of his advanced age, Chanute could not fly actively, leaving this to his several assistants, of whom A. M. Herring and W. Avery were most active. Altogether Chanute and his assistants experimented with five gliders, making about one thousand flights. His series of articles, entitled "Progress in Flying Machines, " began publication in The American Engineering and Railroad Journal in 1891 and appeared in book form in 1894. It was one of the most authoritative books on the history of aeronautics. Throughout his experiments, Chanute's primary purpose was to achieve stability. His experimental methods were characteristic of the practical engineer who recognized that progress would be slow. Chanute conducted an extensive correspondence with aeronautical figures all over the world, including the Wright brothers between May 1900 and January 1910. Of his many contributions to aeronautics, one of the most important was his encouragement of the Wrights. He visited them first in Dayton in June 1901 and again at Kitty Hawk during their gliding experiments there. As president of the Western Society of Engineers, Chanute encouraged Wilbur Wright to report upon the results of the Kitty Hawk experiments in 1901; after the Wrights' successful flight of 1903, he gave the weight of his authority to their support. Chanute continued to write on aeronautics, publishing his last paper late in 1910. He died at his home in Chicago after a lingering illness, November 23, 1910, his worldwide influence on aeronautical progress generally acknowledged.