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The 1910 Le Canard

Le Canard during tests in 1911.

Le Canard (lit. "The Duck", but initially called L'hydro-aéroplane between 1910 to 1913) was a French seaplane, and the first seaplane in history. It successfully took-off and flew on March 28, 1910, at Martigues, France. The plane flew for a distance of 800 meters over the water. It was invented by Henri Fabre.

Le Canard was developed over a period of four years by the French engineer Henri Fabre, a mechanic named Marius Burdin, former mechanic of Captain Fernand Ferber, and a naval architect from Marseilles named Léon Sebille. It was a plane equipped with three floats (hence its first name, the "hydro-aéroplane" until 1913), which were developed by engineer Bonnemaison, and were patented by Fabre. The seaplane was equipped with a 50 horse-power rotary engine of the Gnome type, powering a 2.6 meter propeller. It has a spread of 14 meters, its length was 8.5 meters, and it weighed 380 kg.

The first flight was certified by a representative of Martigues, Me Honoré Raphel.

These experiments were closely followed by the aircraft pioneers Gabriel and Charles Voisin. Eager to try flying a seaplane as well, Voisin purchased several of the Fabre floats and fitted them to their Canard Voisin airplane. In October 1910, the Canard-Voisin became the first seaplane to fly over the river Seine.

In 1911, Fabre's Le Canard was flown by Jean Becue at the prestigious event Concours de Canots Automobiles de Monaco. Following these successes, Henri Fabre built several seaplanes and commercialized them.

Two units of Le Canard are preserved today: one is in Marignane airport (Bouches du Rhône), the other is in the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace du Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis), near Paris.

In the United States the first seaplane flight occurred on Jan. 26, 1911, by Glenn H. Curtiss. On March 27, 1919, the first transatlantic flight was completed by a U.S. Navy seaplane.