Rodrig Goliescu

Rodrig Goliescu (1877 – 1942) was a Romanian inventor, engineer, and lieutenant of Polish descent. He designed and built the "Avioplan," the first airplane with a tubular fuselage.

Life Early life Rodrig Goliescu's father, Sigmund Dobjanschi, was a Polish refugee who moved to Romania in 1863 following the Polish uprising. After moving to Romania, he married Hortensia Gallo and changed his name to Goliescu. Rodrig was born in Dorohoi on 12 May 1877.

The same year, Goliescu built a model of his Avioplan with a length of and an engine powered by a rubber turnbuckle that was as long as the fuselage, He patented his invention in France (patent no. 402329) which he called a flying machine-avioplan. Unlike his previous model, the machine had above the tubular fuselage, a relatively small wing in the shape of an upturned V, with the foil having a pronounced curve at the leading edge. The three-wheeled landing gear was similar to the tricycle of present-day aircraft. After finishing building his airplane, it was examined by a commission of the Aéro-Club de France. The machine was declared to be satisfactory, but it was not tested in flight.

After almost 20 years of absence from the social life scene, Rodrig Goliescu was rehabilitated in 1934. He went on to patent a new type of aircraft with a tubular fuselage, which he called the Aviocoleopter. It had a set of lateral airscrews, defectors and various devices whose purpose was to reproduce the flight of the coleoptera as far as possible.