In 1910, in the workshop of Gianni Caproni, he designed and built an aircraft known as the Coandă-1910, which he displayed publicly at the second International Aeronautic Salon in Paris that year. The plane used a 4-cylinder piston engine to power a rotary compressor which was intended to propel the craft by a combination of suction at the front and airflow out the rear instead of using a propeller.
Contemporary sources describe the Coandă-1910 as incapable of flight. Years later, after others had developed jet technology, Coandă started making claims that it was a motorjet, and that it actually flew. According to Charles Gibbs-Smith: "There was never any idea of injecting fuel; the machine never flew; it was never destroyed on test; and Flight noted that it was sold to a Monsieur Weyman." Gibbs-Smith continued, "The claim said that after a disastrous crash (which never happened) Coandă wished to begin a 'second aircraft', but 'his funds were exhausted.' Within a year he was ... exhibiting (in October 1911) a brand new propeller-driven machine at the Reims Concours Militaire..." Other aviation writers accepted Coandă's story of his flight tests with the Coandă-1910.
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