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Romanian inventor of engines and airplanes
"An admirable head of expression. Scratched, wrinkled, cut with the knife and the chisel, the head of Al. Ciurcu seems a Rodin bronze, escaped from a showroom, with disheveled hair and beard in the wind”...
Journalist, agronomist, inventor of engines and airplanes, orator, politician, martyr, expelled, prophet in his country and again journalist, Ciurcu did not remain indifferent in front of any of the countless manifestations of human genius", the publicist ND Cocea wrote about him in 1913.
He was born at Sercaia, in Fagaras land, in a family of old Transylvanian scholars. His father, Neculai Ciurcu, had taken part in the Revolution of 1848. He attended secondary school in Brasov (BA in 1872), and higher education in law (1873-1876). In 1876, he was in Bucharest, where he devoted himself, body and soul, to journalistic activity, guided by CA Rosetti. After initially working in various journals, meeting I. L. Caragiale and Mihai Eminescu, he founded several Romanian newspapers of French, with European interchange, including "L'Orient", later "L'Independance Roumaine", important through the propaganda they did abroad for the Romanian cause. On the battlefields of the Independence War, in 1877-1878, as war correspondent, he became friend with the painter Nicolae Grigorescu. In 1882, along with the French journalist Just Buisson from "Havas" news agency in the Romanian capital, he conceived a first draft the original design of a jet engine, but he was expelled from Romania in 1885 under the government led by Ion C. Bratianu due to systematic criticism to the liberal government. Established, against his will, in Paris, Ciurcu and Buisson - two journalists fond of technology – completed their invention. "Jet engine Ciurcu-Buisson" is the first Romanian patent world famous, registered consecutively in France, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria-Hungary and the USA, between 1886-1889. By means of the propeller, built in different ways, constantly refined, the first reactive boat in the world was achieved. It sailed for the first time along the Seine on August 3rd 1886. After Buisson’s death (December 1886), the first jet truck on rails, "the trolley jet", was successfully tested in 1887, as another "first" in the world.
In 1836, the inventors have also designed and built the first jet engine, liquid fueled, for Aeronautics, provided with a guidance system, but lacked the funds to manufacture and assemble the aircraft. However, it is a triple world priority, regarding transportation on water, earth and air.
Even being banished, Ciurcu organized in 1889 the Romanian showroom at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (when they celebrated the centenary of the French Revolution), and after returning home he ran for ten years the newspaper "Time" (1890-1900), founded Journalists' Union and the General Association of Romanian Press. During the last decades of life, he also devoted himself, with great skill, to agriculture (viticulture, horticulture, livestock, etc.), organizing a farm model at Copăceni on Arges. He remained until deep old ages a live spirit, always active, fighting for the prosperity of the country and enemy of abuses and unlawfulness. At the celebration of his sixty years anniversary, has stated his guiding principles in life: "sobriety, peace of mind and work". The soul of both a dreamer and a willing man blended with a practical intelligence.
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variant spelling:
Ciurcu, Alexandru
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Curriculum vitae
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* 1854
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Sercaia, Romania
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born
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† 1922
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died
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