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Henri Fabre was from a ship-owning family and he was interested in engineering and hydrodynamics. With a public interest in aviation in France, Fabre decided to build a seaplane. The Hydravion had a fuselage structure of two beams that carried unequal span biplane surfaces with an elevator at the forward end and a monoplane wing at the rear. The engine was a Gnome rotary, mounted at the rear of the upper fuselage beam, driving a pusher propeller.

Hydravion was developed over a period of four years by the French engineer Henri Fabre, a mechanic named Marius Burdin, (a former mechanic of Captain Ferdinand Ferber) and Léon Sebille, a naval architect from Marseilles. It was an aircraft equipped with three floats which were developed by engineer Bonnemaison, and were patented by Fabre.[citation needed]

It successfully took off and flew for a distance of 457 m (1500 ft) on 28 March 1910 at Martigues, France. Apart from the achievement of being the first seaplane in history, Fabre had no flying experience before that day. He flew the floatplane successfully three more times that day and within a week he had flown a distance of 3.5 mi (5.6 km). Then the aircraft had became badly damaged in an accident.

These experiments were closely followed by aviation pioneers Gabriel and Charles Voisin. Eager to try flying a seaplane as well, Voisin purchased several of the Fabre floats and fitted them to their Canard Voisin airplane.

It was flown by Jean Bécue at the prestigious event Concours de Canots Automobiles de Monaco, and crashed there on 12 April 1911, being damaged beyond repair. No more Hydravions have been built.

Following this experience, Henri Fabre built floats for other aviation pioneers.