Charles Terres Weymann

Charles Terres Weymann was a Haitian-born early aeroplane racing pilot, inventor and businessman. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1889, he became a test pilot for Nieuport during the First World War and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He won the 1911 Gordon Bennett Trophy air race and competed in numerous early aviation competitions in Europe. He later developed a widely used method for manufacturing fabric automobile bodies, operating factories in Europe and America in the 1920s, and patented an automatic clutch in 1963. He returned to aircraft design through his company, Societe des Avions C T Weymann, building models including the Weymann 66 and several autogyros. He died in France in 1976.