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Romanian inventor
The mechanical flight with a heavier than air apparatus carrying out, was a real fascination, on the end of XIX century and the beginning of XX century. Thousands of braves tried to achieve it, while "airship balloon" men, which since the end of the eighteenth century had managed to raise in balloons cradles, smiled with superiority, convinced that the future is theirs, of those aircraft lighter than air. Lastly, in the early twentieth century (1903), two Americans, the Wright brothers, managed to fly a plane. But their device could not detach itself from the ground by the force of its engine, but was "released", "powered" by catapult - so by external momentum - and only then it started to higher sky. The first who rose from the ground only by force of its engine, carrying out first-world mechanical flight in technique history, was in 1906, Traian Vuia, born in Banat. But how many adverse circumstances had to overcome to realize his dream, of how much perseverance he needed!
Traian Vuia was born in the village Bujor (it today bears his name), in Caras-Severin and attended high school in Lugoj, proving his skill in early childhood in various crafts. Very attracted of technique and especially having the aspiration of becoming aviator, he followed courses at the Polytechnic School in Budapest, but after a year he passed to Law School, where the frequency was not compulsory, he could work in a legal office, to earn his living. Here he became in 1901, Doctor of Law and later practiced law in Lugoj. But his great passion is not left him; moreover, he managed to "contaminate" others. He built a model "airplane-automobile" and, with money hardly gathered by him and especially with those donated by several people from Banat, he went to Paris, the capital of world aviation those times.
Here he addressed a memorandum to Academy of Sciences of France (February 1903), presented the project, but the high scientific forum, dominated by " airship balloon" men rejected it, putting a resolution that today sounds ridiculous; it says that to try to achieve flight with a heavier than air machine "is an illusion" that "can not be produced but by a diseased mind". Another would be discouraged, but Vuia trusts and takes the idea further. “I do not work for my personal glory, but I work for the glory of human genius, "he often said.
In the same year, 1903, he patented his invention and proceeded to build the project, helped again with money by his friends from Banat. In 1905, after overcoming numerous technical difficulties, the device "Vuia-I" (his friends called "Die Fledermaus", due to the shape of its wings) is ready: a light monoplane with a tractor and propellers, canvas folding wings, landing gear consisting of a chair with pneumatic wheel . On March 18, 1906, historical datum in aviation history, on the land from Montesson, near Paris, "Die Fledermaus", piloted by Traian Vuia takes off flight, only by force of its engine, without any outside force to "launch". A known historian of aviation have to write over the decades: "Traian Vuia made the old Europe to be smart. He is the first in time" (Rene Chamba).
Later, Vuia built and experimented new types of aircraft, improved, also two helicopters (1918 and 1921), with more than one rotor propulsion and sustentation, steering rudder and horizontal stabilizer. He is the inventor of an original steam generator (1925), own design, which has found wide application in construction of thermal power plants.
Ardent patriot, Traian Vuia fought during World War in Paris for the union of Transylvania with the country, even organizing "National Committee of Romanians in Transylvania and Banat", edited a magazine and patriotic manifestos. During the Second World War, although at an advanced age, he was part of the resistance movement in France, the president "Romanian National Front". He returned to Romania in 1950, but died soon afterwards, crushed by a serious illness, having had the happiness to see again his native land.
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variant spelling:
Vuia, Traian
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Curriculum vitae
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* 1872
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Bujor
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born
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1901
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Budapest
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Ph.D.
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1903
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Paris
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Patent Vuia I
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1918 - 1921
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Paris
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Build two helicopters
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1925
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Paris
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Invent a steam generator
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† 1950
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died
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