Claude Grahame-White (photo)

Claude Grahame-White, born at Southhampton on 31 August 1879 and educated at Bedford Grammar School had been a yachtsman, a motoring enthusiast, and a dealer in automobiles before he was converted to aviation at the Rheims meeting in 1909. Forthwith, he had ordered a duplicate of Bleriot's ill-fated Model XII; and to become acquainted with its construction he enrolled as a worker in the Bleriot establishment at Neuilly-sur-Seine. He could hardly restrain his impatience. On the morning he was to take delivery at Issy-les-Moulineaux, instructions had not yet arrived. Impulsively he got into the machine and began practicing short hops. He then shipped the plane to Pau, where Leblanc was his instructor; and on 4 January 1910 he received the first French license --- No. 30 --- to be awarded to a Briton. (Under date of 26 April he would be granted British license No. 6 for having qualified as a pilot a Pau.) The Model XII, however, had only a brief career. A miscalculation on landing one day, with Bleriot himself at the controls, resulted in the two-seated monoplane being wrecked; it was the last of its kind. Grahame-White returned to London and began the development of a great flying center at Hendon, on what was then a vacant, weed-covered lot. At the same time he entered the Henry Farman school at Chalons, learning to fly the biplane with which he would become famous for a dramatic dash in the dark of the night, racing Louis Paulhan for a 10,000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail. The course from London to Manchester --- a distance of 183 miles --- had to be covered within 24 hours