Léon Bollée
Léon Bollée (1870 - 1913) was a French automobile manufacturer and inventor.
His family had been well known bell founders and his father, Amédée Bollée (1844 — 1917), was a pioneer in the automobile industry making several steam cars and both he and his older brother Amédée-Ernest-Marie (1867 - 1926) became automobile manufacturers.
After much work that began in 1887 on calculating machines (the Direct Multiplier, the Calculating Board and the Arithmographe), it was the Multiplier that functioned and rendered multiplications automatically. This was his first invention and at the age of 19 years old, his mechanical calculator won first prize at the 1889 Paris Exposition and was registered with German Patent number 82963 (in 1895).[1]
Léon and his father entered a steam car, La Nouvelle, in the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race and Léon went on to develop a gasoline powered vehicle in 1895 which was entered in the 1896 Paris-Marseille-Paris race.[2]
It was in 1896 that he patented and started manufacturing the three-wheeled vehicles he had invented in 1895 calling it the Voiturette (which can be translated as autoette). These had a horizontal motor and were equipped, for the first time, with rubber tires. With many modifications, a new model was brought to the 1897 Paris-Dieppe race and the Paris-Trouville race and won both events with respective speeds of 24 miles per hour (mph) and 28 mph.[2] He founded the Léon Bollée Automobiles in 1895 in Mans. By 1903, he had started producing bigger vehicles and soon gained a good reputation for quality.
When the Wright brothers came to France to show their flying invention, Bollée let them use his Mans factory.
Léon Bollée was injured in a flying accident in 1911 and never really recovered as he also had a pre existing heart problem and died in 1913. His widow continued to run the compnay but in 1922 it was bought by the Morris Motor Company and the company was renamed Morris-Léon Bollée. The intention was to use the new company to sell Morris designs in France and get round the French import restrictions. Morris sold the company in 1931 to a group of investors who renamed it Societé Nouvelle Léon Bollée and production continued until 1933.
References
- ^ "Léon Bollée's Arithmographe". IBM. Retrieved 2006-10-05.
- ^ a b "1898 Leon Bollee Tri-Car". Owls Head Transportation Museum. Retrieved 2006-10-05.