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When we see a plane flying high in the sky there is so much to think about… you can think about how high it is or how that plane was made or how it looks very much like a bird.
Today I will tell you about one of the creators of this incredible object that makes us travel so far, so fast.
His name is Henri Coandă and he was born in Bucharest in 1886, on the 7th of June. His father was a mathematics professor at the National School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest and his mother was French, born in Brittany.
Henri mostly attended military schools because his father wanted him to have a military career, so he graduated high school as a sergeant major when he was 18 years old. He continued his studies at the School of Artillery, Military, and Naval Engineering in Bucharest. He was then sent with an artillery regiment to Germany in 1904, and he enrolled in a technical school in Berlin.
As you can imagine, Henri Coandă graduated as an artillery officer, but his inner drive to invent and create did not work hand in hand with the strict military discipline he experienced. So, he came back to Bucharest, then traveled to Iran and Tibet and finally went to Paris where he started his engineering career.
During his studies in aeronautical construction and engineering he built a plane called Coandă-1910 based on the reaction engine principles he had experimented with and elaborated on during his research. It was actually the first reaction aircraft in the world! The plane’s compressor was powered by an engine with 50 horsepower (this would be like an engine of a very old Skoda Fabia).
The physical principle that he discovered, which helped him in his research, known now as the the Coandă effect, states that fluids will remain attached to a convex surface during movement.
(demonstration for kids: I place a piece of metal — a knife — under slowly running tap water and show the children how the water follows the metal’s shape).
Basically, this is how his plane worked! (show these two pictures)
This plane was a major invention for the year 1910, since classical aircraft engines were built not long before. He was a brilliant visionary who entered the field of aeronautics when science and technique were not yet prepared for his vision. Gustave Eiffel, the creator of Eiffel Tower, once said about Henri Coanda: “This boy was born 30, maybe 50 years earlier.” Henri’s ideas were too advanced from a technological point of view, since reaction aircraft engines weren’t often used until between 1939 -1945, during the period of the Second World War.
However, Henri was not just an inventor of an aircraft. He also invented a new type of synthetic marble that kept the color and nuances of the natural material, because he said “beauty is not just a detail of construction, it is a necessary thing. We cannot ignore beauty when it comes to lifelong constructions.”
And have you ever thought that flying saucers could be something real? Henri designed what he called a lenticular aerodyne which means a lens-shaped aircraft. He never made a full-sized version though. He also participated in the construction of the braking system that was used for the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar modules when landing on the Moon. These technical devices are called flying epaulettes.
So, Henri Coandă was passionate about creating elements that help people adapt to their environment, to improve improvements as my teacher would say, and he was active in so many fields of science, not just in aeronautics. He created over 2600 inventions and patented over 700 inventions.
He died in 1972 when he was 86 years old and today, we can find his tomb in Bucharest, Romania, at Belu Cemetery. We can send him a good thought if you’d like to. We can thank him for giving us the possibility of flying so far, so fast.
