Louis Paulhan, pilot's licence Nr10 from the L'actualité Sartrouville website Translation by Maryse Castellon. Courtesy of M.Galilée, 8-1-05      Louis Paulhan was born in Pézenas in 1883 and was a citzen of Sartrouville, where he lived in Gypaète House, rue Jean Jaurès, now an old people’s home known as "Villa Berthe".      An airship engineer, he showed an acute interest in building scale models and won a competition in which the first prize was the life-size construction of the winning model. In view of the model’s complexity, they preferred to offer him an air-frame. Louis Paulhan soon managed to procure an engine and undertook his apprenticeship as a pilot, a title he was the 10th person in France to conquer. ( Louis Blériot was the holder of licence Nr1.)Louis Paulhan earned public attention at several air shows, especially that of Douai, which took place from July 10th to July 18th 1909, where he smashed the records in altitude (150m) and duration (1h and 07mn), covering 47 km. He triumphed in the London-Manchester race - a 300 km long flight.      After being mobilized, then demobilized, as a fighter pilot in WWI, he became a seaplane builder, and later retired to St-Jean-de-Luz, where he died on February 10th 1963.

 

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