Event Topic: Technology

This lecture by Graham Mottram explores the parallel advancements in automobile and aero engine technology during early powered flight. Internal combustion engines evolved significantly in power-to-weight ratios, enabling both motor cars and aircraft to advance.
Driven by car racing and wartime combat, engine technology rapidly improved through shared innovations between the two fields.

In this second lecture, we will examine the history of the Nieuport X BB biplane, then the long dynasty of its derivatives, both two-seater and single-seater, which served on all fronts of the Great War, being used by all belligerents up until the Russian Civil War in the early 1920s.

Born in 1971, David Méchin has been an aviation historian for two decades, writing many articles in the French historical press, some translated for the Cross and Cockade magazine. He recently wrote an encyclopaedia on WW1 French aces published by Aeronauts Press.