Jacques Balsan
Louis Jacques Balsan is an aviator and industrial French born with Chateauroux (Indre) in 1868 and died in 1956.
Jacques Balsan is resulting from a family of industrialists which provides the French Army in uniform as of Ier Empire and which was at the origin of famous cloth “blue horizon”. Their textile factories, located at Chateauroux, resulted from a factory rested by the prince of Condé at the instigation of Jean-Baptiste Colbert at the 17th century. At the twenty-four years age, Jacques Balsan enters the family businesses and traverses the world to buy wools.
Impassioned Ballooning, it gains the record of duration and the Record of altitude to the World Fair of 1900. Pioneer of aviation, it buys its first plane in 1909 and obtains the patent n° 22 of pilot of planes. In February 1910, over its monoplane Blériot, it gains the price of Héliopolis (Egypt).
During the First World War, the general Maunoury charges it with the air recognition of the site of the first Bataille of the Marne. It contributes to form the Escadrille Fayette, where it is useful, and which is then integrated in the American army.
July 4th 1921 it marries Consuelo Vanderbilt, by its first marriage duchess of Malborough. The couple has a property with Èze (the Alpes-Maritimes) where it receives many celebrities like the duke of Connaught, wire of the Reine Victoria, the Maharajah de Kapurthala or Charlie Chaplin. In Paris, it resides in a private mansion built by Rene Sergent for Jules Steinbach, 9 Avenue Charles-Floquet (VIIe), acquired by Consuelo Vanderbilt in 1920.
Jacques Balsan was the older brother of Etienne Balsan, which was the first guard of Coco Chanel.
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