Armand Dufaux

Picture - Dufaux helicopter (1905). Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris.

Armand Dufaux (1883 - 1941) was a Swiss aviation pioneer who became famous for flying the length of Lake Geneva in 1910.

He and his brother, Henri Dufaux (1879-1980) were natives of Geneva. Their fir

st design was a model helicopter weighing 17 kg; this was followed by a large eight-wing plane that was unable to fly, then a third design that crashed on its first flight.

The Dufaux 4 was their first successful craft. On 28 August 1910, Armand flew it from St. Gingolph to Geneva (c.40mi. 64km), taking just 56 minutes and 5 seconds, and winning a prize of 5,000 Swiss francs for the feat.

Later in 1910, the brothers established an aircraft business, and in 1911, sold their "Dufaux 5" to an 18-year-old Ernest Failloubaz, whose reconnaissance flights were the beginning of Swiss military aviation.

Picture - Dufaux 4, March 1911

The Dufaux 4 is today on display at the Swiss Transport Museum. Armand Dufaux was honored on a Swiss postage stamp in 1997, as one of four pioneers of Swiss aviation.

Media related to Armand Dufaux at Wikimedia Commons
Swiss Museum of Transport info on Dufaux
Geneva air pioneers page, with timeline (French)
Full biography

More airplanes.

Source: WikiPedia