Our fellow citizen Ivan Sarić
On this day in Subotica, Ivan Sarić was born in 1876.
Ivan Sarić is one of the many well-known people Subotica has produced.
Of course, the first association with Ivan Sarić is aviation, but we will also share with you that Ivan Sarić was an athlete from an early age, an excellent cyclist, motorcyclist, driver in car races, a wrestler and one of the founders of FK Bačka from Subotica, and in his competing days he managed to become a cycling champion of three countries: Hungary, Austria and Serbia.
At that championship in Belgrade, which he won in cycling over 1 km and 25 km, he brought along the Subotica footballers, who demonstrated the game with a ball at Topčider – football.
Barely 7 years after the flights of the Wright brothers, Ivan became the first man from this region to fly successfully in an aircraft of his own design and making, Sarić 1.
After training and making a few attempts, he took off in his aircraft on 16 October 1910 from the then City Racecourse, today’s Subotica hippodrome. Sarić’s first flight was watched by more than 7,000 people from Subotica, and Ivan circled the entire racecourse at a height of 30 metres.
His aircraft, designated Sarić 1, is known to have had a three-cylinder 24 hp engine, to have been made of wood with linen canvas, bicycle wheels, piano wires, a garden chair as the pilot’s seat and a milk churn that served as the fuel tank.
Ivan Sarić was 34 years old at the time; he had finished the Commercial Academy and lived and worked as a state clerk.
In most of the sports he took up Ivan won medals across Austria-Hungary and in other countries as well, and one such motoring event took him to Paris, where the fateful encounter with aeroplanes took place. Sarić met Blériot and secretly made a sketch of the aircraft on the spot, which served him as the basis for the aeroplane he built. Since he did not have all the same materials the French aircraft had been built from, Ivan had to improvise and find other solutions; that is how he introduced innovations in the construction of the wing which – believe it or not – are still in use today.
In 1911 Sarić improved his aircraft into the Sarić 2 model, for which he also designed the engine. Besides aircraft and engines, he designed propellers and a helicopter.
We in Subotica are very proud of Ivan Sarić and his achievements. He received many honours and lived to a great age, dying in Subotica in 1966.
A replica of his aircraft, with the original propellers and other parts he worked on himself in 1957, is today kept at the Aviation Museum in Belgrade, together with his correspondence with other designers of the time, documents and many personal belongings.
A magnificent monument to him stands in our city, and we run past it in honour of the memory of him and of achievements we may freely call world-class.
Two important institutions in Subotica bear his name today as well: the Ivan Sarić Aero Club and the Ivan Sarić Technical School.
Ivan Sarić: sportsman, aircraft designer, a man who devoted himself and his knowledge to humanity.
Run through history!
Journalistic and research section of the Subotica Half Marathon
Source:
www.bunjevacka-matica.rs
www.srpskilegat.rs