Deperdussin 1910 monoplane

The 1910 Deperdussin monoplane was the first aircraft built in significant quantities by Aéroplanes Deperdussin, the firm founded in 1909 by the silk broker Armand Deperdussin with Louis Béchereau as technical director. It was a tractor, mid-wing monoplane with a very slender fabric-covered wooden box-girder fuselage and wing-warping lateral control. The prototype was first flown by Guillaume Busson at Issy-les-Moulineaux in October 1910 with a water-cooled four-cylinder Clerget engine. Variants flew successfully in air races and gained several records during 1911, including a passenger-carrying speed record set by Busson at Reims on 13 February. Two were bought by the Australian government for the Central Flying School at Point Cook, and an airworthy example, G-AANH, survives in the Shuttleworth Collection in England.