CHANUTE, OCTAVE

born Feb. 18, 1832, Paris died Nov. 23, 1910, Chicago U.S. aeronaut whose work and interests profoundly influenced Orville and Wilbur Wright and the invention of the airplane. Brought to the U.S. at an early age, Chanute was educated as a civil engineer and built railroads and railroad bridges before turning to aviation. Attracted by the work of Otto Lilienthal and other Europeans who were experimenting with gliding flight, Chanute (then in his 60s) established a glider camp on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan near Chicago. There he and his associates made about 2,000 gliding flights without accident in machines of his own design. Chanute was particularly interested in problems of control and equilibrium, and the data he accumulated proved extremely useful to the Wright brothers in evolving their earlier designs. He was in constant correspondence with the Wrights and on several occasions visited Kitty Hawk, N.C., during the period (190102) of their gliding experiments, which preceded their successful powered flights.