Louis Charles Joseph Blériot was a French aviator, inventor, and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for cars and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. Blériot was the first to use the combination of hand-operated joystick and foot-operated rudder control as used to the present day to operate the aircraft control surfaces. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. In 1909 he became world-famous for making the first airplane flight across the English Channel, winning the prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. He was the founder of Blériot Aéronautique, a successful aircraft manufacturing company.

École Centrale Paris was a French grande école in engineering and science. It was also known by its official name École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. In 2015, École Centrale Paris merged with Supélec to form CentraleSupélec, a constituent college of the University of Paris-Saclay.