André Michelin

"André and Édouard Michelin, the founders, had a passion for aviation. In 1908, they created the famous Cup. In 1912, they called for five thousand combat “aeroplanes.” “Our future is in the air,” they claimed, thus showing themselves as pioneers. During the First World War, the Bréguet-Michelin contributed to the victory."

"⁠André Michelin clearly remembers his time working at the map department of the French Ministry of the Interior. He produced three thousand tracings—one per canton—of the official map before enlarging its scale. He sent teams of surveyors out on the roads and developed the accordion folding system to make them easier to use in the confined space of a vehicle. He removed everything that wasn’t essential for motorists and added color. Before 1914, he would come up with the idea of using aerial photography to correct the imperfections of his early maps.⁠"

"To put an end to the defiance from these overzealous officials, André Michelin invites André Tardieu, then Minister of Public Works, in 1928 to come to Puy-de-Dôme where Michelin had been able to mark out “his” territory at will. Some forty engineers and technicians from the Bridges accompany him. Michelin asks them to give their opinion in writing."

"A few days later, in the large amphitheater of the Sorbonne, the National Committee for Military Aviation is created. Its goal: to organize a gigantic subscription to buy planes that will be made available to the general staff. (The Committee will collect more than six million gold francs with which it will grant piloting scholarships, purchase one hundred and twenty planes, and equip seventy-nine airfields.) André Michelin is the Committee’s treasurer."

"Throughout the year 1907, however, he devoured all the newspapers that talked about these new devices — a very small market for tires — and became passionate about the feats of Voisin, Blériot, Trajan Vuia, Bréguet, de La Vaulx. He shares the analyses of Archdeacon — an old friend who has often participated in car races with the company’s tires — about the indifference of engineers “who dismissively walk past” this new aeronautics where everything is to be invented or on “the inertia of the country’s major industrialists.” He approved when “Archdec” was outraged: “To say that there is no one among our major automobile manufacturers who understands that with the means at their disposal, they could in a small corner of their workshops, create a flying machine at little expense in a few weeks.” And he applauded when this grandson of a Scot — like the Daubrée cousins — wanted to lead by example by founding the cup for the first kilometer to encourage the marvelous “mad fliers.” At the end of the evening, in honor of the new world record holder, the organizers announce “cinematographic projections.” Like those which, under the impulse of Léon Gaumont and Charles Pathé, attract the curious to the major boulevards. On the program: the first flights of heavier-than-air machines. André Michelin is thrilled. “Since one of these tools has been able to leave the ground,” he immediately writes to Edouard, still absorbed in Clermont-Ferrand with his molds and vats, “there is no reason, given the speed of progress we have seen happening in the automobile industry and the great similarity between the engine for a car and the engine for an airplane, that soon we could not travel very long distances. Here, then, is an industry full of promise, both from the perspective of civilian life and from the viewpoint of war. What if we embarked on the manufacturing of birds?”"

"One thing is certain: the jovial figure with plump shapes, who would change silhouette with the pencils of Poulbot, Philibert, Fabiano, Mich—the official poster artist for Peugeot—and a few others, found his name on a day in July 1898 after the Paris-Amsterdam-Paris race where the automotive champion Léon Théry greeted André Michelin with a cheeky “Look, there’s Bibendum.” The onlookers present found it amusing, and Michelin, always on the lookout, immediately came up with the brilliant formula."

"Born in Paris in 1892, Robert Puiseux is the son and grandson of astronomers. The war interrupted his studies when, as a “taupe” at Lycée Henri-IV, he was preparing for Polytechnique. His passion for mountains led him to meet the Michelins. Two years after the marriage of his sister Marguerite with Jean Michelin, André’s eldest son, he married Anne, Edouard’s third daughter. Tested like everyone else, entrusted with various missions, he was ultimately given the responsibility of “the technique,” the heart of the citadel. Punctual, discreet, solid, hardworking, and tireless, the adopted Auvergnat immersed himself in the mold that was imposed on him."

"Another initiative to popularize the House and its products: maps and guides. In 1900, one year after the first Tour de France by car, Bibendum made its first big move: the publication of the first Michelin tire guide, which informed new motorists—wealthy people accustomed to a certain class—about well-kept hotels, good restaurants, and ways “to communicate by mail, telegraph, or telephone.” André Michelin, who created it, intended this red-covered guide for chauffeurs and cyclists, to whom it would be offered free of charge if requested. As it would appear each year in the early days of spring, it would soon become, in the House’s advertising, “the motorists’ Easter egg.”"

"“At the signing of the armistice, wrote André Michelin, the air fleet requested, from the beginning of 1912, by our tricolor brochure was, if not completed, at least close to being so. Much better, the production program established by the general headquarters and which the state undersecretariats for aeronautics were working to satisfy, included the presence at the French front of six thousand planes by July 1er 1919. The definitive consecration of the airplane as a powerful and precise weapon of war was an accomplished fact.”"

"And the Encyclopedia of drivers is expanding. After the Battlefield Guides (in 1917) published in French, English, and German (twenty-nine volumes in total) with nearly one and a half million copies (and for the benefit of the work of the French repopulation by Dr Bertillon), André Michelin releases the Guide to Morocco, the regional tourist guides with red covers, ancestors of the current green guides (the Brittany Guide appears in 1926). In 1926, the Good Tables, marked by a particular sign—which would soon turn into a star—are introduced in the France Guide. (The first two and three stars will be awarded to provincial restaurants in 1931 and Paris in 1933.) An Air Guide is released in 1930."

"On December 7, a new prize: for the inventor of the best aiming and launching device. The day before, in the newspaper Le Matin, André Michelin published an open letter: “The airplane, which four years ago was still struggling to fly for a few minutes and timidly covering a few kilometers, is today recognized by all as: “1° A marvelous reconnaissance tool, the eye of command. “2° The indispensable aid of artillery. “3° A formidable combat machine that everyone already envisions and that tomorrow will prove itself, capable of paralyzing mobilization, potentially delaying by several weeks the deployment of certain army corps by blowing up railways, junction stations, supply centers, ammunition depots; changing the course of the battle by forcing fresh troop bodies hurrying along roads to disperse in the fields to decide the victory (at Waterloo, Blücher).”"

"The years he has lived through since the end of the First World War have been the hardest of his life. His brother André—“I was the Champagne, he was the bubbles,” Edouard used to say—died on April 4, 1931, taking with him a fantastic sense of public relations and advertising, an intuition for staging “hits” to be at the forefront of the news that the brand would never find again."

"To aid in the development of hospitality — an essential complement to the automobile — André Michelin heavily subscribes to the capital of the new National Hotel Credit, which proposes to offer long-term loans to professionals wishing to increase the capacity and comfort of their establishment."

"In Clermont, the engineers of the company do not want to hear about the “Salmon 200 HP” engines sent by the Ministry of War to equip the Breguet-Michelin. They demand the most powerful and lightest engines possible “to rise quickly, fly long and with certainty.” The only ones matching what the Michelin people want are those manufactured in Billancourt by Louis Renault. Moreover, the planes need to be equipped with bomb launchers and sights capable of carrying four hundred kilos of projectiles with a range of four hundred kilometers. These proposals are finally accepted. Very quickly, André Michelin obtains the demobilization of the engineer responsible for tire manufacturing who is in Auxerre. He will organize, in record time, the production for the Minister of War. Five versions of these Breguet-Michelin will be studied, and two models—equipped with Renault engines—will be mass-produced. When the war ends, seven planes will leave the workshops of Clermont-Ferrand each day. A fantastic pace."

"André Michelin, who participated in the event as a passenger in Serpollet’s steam car, is convinced that special steel-spoked wheels and inflatable tires are needed for the automobile to be lighter, go faster, last longer, and become more accessible to new customers. In Clermont, Edouard is hesitant. He lists the technical problems that need to be overcome. “The carriage tire rolls on the smooth pavements of cities, the car tire must roll on the most hostile ground, on rolling stones, on sharp flint. The carriage tire is used at low speed. The car tire is destined for fast speeds and, moreover, equips the driving wheels. Wouldn’t it be better, under these conditions, to concentrate all efforts on horse-drawn carriages which offer a practically unlimited customer base?”"

"When in 1919, André and Edouard Michelin published a brochure on their efforts before and during the First World War to provide France with a bombing aviation, they denounced “a few men in power, of whom three were particularly harmful.”"