Renard's "Dirigible Parachute."
In 1889 Commandant Renard, the eminent superintendent of the French
Aeronautical Department, exhibited at the Paris Exposition of that year,
an apparatus experimented with some years before, which he termed a
"dirigible parachute." It consisted of an oviform body to which were
pivoted two upright slats carrying above the body nine long superposed
flat blades spaced about one-third of their width apart. When this
apparatus was properly set at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the
body and dropped from a balloon, it travelled back against the wind for
a considerable distance before alighting. The course could be varied by
a rudder. No practical application seems to have been made of this
device by the French War Department, but Mr. J. P. Holland, the
inventor of the submarine boat which bears his name, proposed in 1893 an
arrangement of pivoted
framework attached to the body of a flying machine which combines the
principle of Commandant Renard with the curved blades experimented with
by Mr. Phillips, now to be noticed, with the addition of lifting screws
inserted among the blades.
