Corradino d ascanio biography examples

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The war was not yet over, but entrepreneur Enrico Piaggio was already thinking about reconstruction and production conversion back to peacetime work: he had an idea for a small, simple, low-cost, fuel-efficient vehicle for individual mobility, that everyone could ride on the country’s war-wrecked roads.

VIDEO: D’ASCANIO DRAWS THE VESPA

In the video’s English translation, Corradino d’Ascanio provides a running commentary on his drawing of the Vespa scooter: “I put a mudguard below the seat to cover the wheel…I aligned the steering column with the front wheel, automatically the scooter takes shape.

Whereas here the system is similar to that widely used on aeroplane undercarriages, where the wheels are cantilevered, so they can be taken off, as easily as on an automobile.”

The pre-production prototype of the Vespa 98cc, designed by Corradino d'Ascanio, 1945

“Dreams must never be allowed to die,” Corradino d’Ascanio (Popoli, Abruzzo, 1 February 1891-Pisa, 5 August 1981) wrote to his children.

The scooter body was in metal, the only one of its type in the world. From when he was a child he loved flying, a subject that he deepened by graduating in industrial engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin and voluntarily enrolling in the "Aviator Flights Battalion" Engineering Corps in Turin at the outbreak of World War I. During the war experience, he revealed his skills in aircraft and his ability in repairing and saving damaged airplanes, testing sophisticated technical improvements - as the first installation of a radio transmitter on a plane - earning promotions on the field.

From 1916, he collaborated with the aeronautic construction company "O.

Another new feature was to provide wheels that could be taken off, not in the same way as normal motorcycle wheels (which are mounted on a fork with a cross axle, so if you have a puncture you have pull out the axle, dismantle and remove the wheel). From 1918 to 1919, he tried his luck in America, where he designed small aircraft fitted with motorcycle engines and set up a company with Ugo Venerio D’Annunzio, the son of the celebrated Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.

D’Ascanio, a true genius!

Corradino D'Ascanio

General Corradino D'Ascanio was an Italian aeronautical engineer. Nevertheless, because of the lack of interest from the Italian government, the project stopped and the company with Trojani dissolved. The US military had used them to get around Nazi defence tactics, destroying roads and bridges during the Battle of Monte Cassino and in the Dolomites and the Austrian border areas.

Corradino D'Ascanio, still a teenager, aged just fifteen years, is passionate on the fly, and after observing the flight of birds designs and builds a glider on which it is making its first short flights.

He studied at the Polytechnic of Turin where he graduated in mechanical engineering in 1914, then volunteered nell'Arma of Engineers.

In 1916 he enters in the technical office of the building society Pomilio, with which then moved to the U.S.

for a year.

Later Corradino D'Ascanio opened a studio technician at Peoples, making patents of various kinds.

In 1925 he founded a company with the Baron Pietro Trojani, with whom he made his helicopter.
The third prototype, D'AT3, commissioned by the Ministry of Aviation, in October of 1930 winning three firsts in height, distance and duration in the air and remain unbeaten for some years, but gets no production orders.

In 1932 he was hired as an expert by Piaggio propellers, first as a consultant and on a permanent basis.

In 1939D'Ascanio, Piaggio allows the construction of other helicopters, such as PD1, PD2 completed in 1943, when it was destroyed in the bombing of the Piaggio factory in Pontedera.

At the end of the war (1945) D'Ascanio designed out at the request of Enrico Piaggio, a scooter that gets a huge success: it will become the symbol of postwar reconstruction: the Vespa, vehicle simple and economical means of transportation intended for the average Italian family have different trends and developments in its remarkable longevity and becoming a symbol of certain ages.

The Vespa was an immediate success and in 1956, ten years after first production, is reached one million vehicles produced.

D'Ascanio, in his long life he had many awards and honors, such as Knight Grand Cross granted by the President of the Republic or the qualifications of various aviation associations.

Author of numerous scientific publications, published between 1954 and 1980, was professor of drawing machines and projects at the University of Pisa between 1937 and 1961.

Corradino D'Ascanio died August 6, 1981 in Pisa.

 

The first prototypes didn't achieve encouraging results, but the D'AT3, commissioned by the Ministry of Aeronautics, in 1930 won the records of height, distance and flight duration which remained unbeaten for some years.

In 1906, at the age of fifteen, just three years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, he designed and built a sort of hang glider from bedsheets, for experimental flights, managing to travel a distance of 15 metres.

corradino d ascanio biography examples

Having invented a legend however, wasn't enough for D’Ascanio: the helicopter pioneer recognition received in 1948 at an international congress in Philadelphia convinces him to try again.

Corradino d'Ascanio

Corradino D'Ascanio was born in Popoli in the province of Pescara in 1891. At Piaggio he continues with the 1940's prototypes and makes the PD$ take off, which is no longer competitive on the market, where Americans have, literally, taken flight.

Pomilio", supplier to Italian aviation. But the American adventure failed to make headway. In 1918 when the Pomilio brothers went to Indianapolis, in the United States to found the consultancy company Pomilio Brothers Corporation, D’Ascanio followed them and worked at the new-born company until the following year, when his contract ended.

D’Ascanio left Piaggio for the Agusta Group in 1964, to deal with helicopters once again, but in this last experience his projects achieve little luck. D’Ascanio was a remarkable character, tenacious and highly gifted, who led an adventurous life marked by success and sacrifice. D’Ascanio presented his prototype, the “MP6”, in 1945 and the final version, which conquered Enrico Piaggio, in 1946.