Jan Kašpar

Jan Kašpar (1883-1927) was an aircraft engine designer and the first Czech aviator who managed to take off with an engine of his own design and make several long-distance flights. Kašpar was originally trained as a designer, he started with combustion engines for cars, but eventually worked his way up to the construction of the first Czech aircraft engine, which he then took into the air himself.

The first Czech aviator was born in Pardubice in 1883 in the family of an innkeeper in the famous local inn Veselka. From his youth he was interested in sports and technology. He enrolled at the Technical University in Prague, where he graduated in mechanical engineering in 1907 and became a designer. It was a time of rapid development of new machines, especially automobiles and internal combustion engines, which captivated the young Kašpar. After school, he immediately joined the German engineering firm Bassel und Selve, where he worked on the design of engines for automobiles. In 1909, however, he returned to Bohemia and joined the company Laurin and Klement, a successful automobile workshop producing cars and developing new combustion engines. Here he first became involved in aviation and participated in the construction of the first aircraft engine in Bohemia. After disagreements with the management, he decided to become independent and, together with his cousin and friends, he returned to his native Pardubice and here, in a local engineering company, they attempted to build the first Czech aircraft. Baron Artur Kraus, a native of Pardubice and a well-known personality, the director of the first public observatory, helped them financially, professionally and organizationally. After several unsuccessful attempts with a wooden aircraft structure, the so-called airframe, Kašpar purchased a ready-made airframe from the French aviator Blériot and fitted it with an engine of his own design. The first flight on this aircraft took place on 16 April 1910 in Pardubice. More flights followed and in the summer of that year he showed his machine to the public for the first time. Gradually, he improved the aircraft and finally abandoned the use of engines of his own design and fitted the aircraft with a Daimler engine. His most famous flight took place in 1911, when he managed to fly from Pardubice to Chuchle in Prague. The record-breaking flight attracted the attention of the entire nation and Kašpar became a celebrity. He continued to design aircraft in his home town of Pardubice and founded an aviation school here. The end of his efforts came with the First World War, which accelerated the development of aviation and put an end to lone designers like Kašpar. The first Czech aviator gave up engineering after the war and started a timber business. Disagreements in business, failures and financial losses, and probably also psychological difficulties, finally led to Jan Kašpar, poor and on the verge of strength, taking his own life in 1927.

SVITÁK, P.: První český letec, inženýr Jan Kašpar, a začátky českého letectví: příběh našeho prvního letce, jeho předchůdců, spolupracovníků a současníků s přihlédnutím k vývoji letectví ve světě. Pardubice: 2003

 

DITRYCH, B.: První a sám: neobyčejný život a zbytečná smrt aviatika Jana Kašpara. Praha 2001

Jan Kašpar (Author: Public domain)