developed , and was a radial rather than rotary engine, but no photographs survive of the five-cylinder experimental model. The Seguin brothers then turned to rotary engines in the interests of better cooling, and the world's first production rotary engine, the 7-cylinder, air-cooled "Omega" was shown at the 1908 Paris automobile show. The first Gnome Omega built still exists, and is now in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The Seguins used the highest strength material available - recently developed nickel steel alloy - and kept the weight down by machining components from solid metal, using the best American and German machine tools to create the engine's components; the cylinder wall of a 50 hp Gnome was only 1.5 mm (0.059 inches) thick, while the connecting rods were milled with deep central channels to reduce weight. While somewhat low powered in terms of units of power per litre, its power-to-weight ratio was an outstanding per kg. The following year, 1909, the inventor Roger Ravaud fitted one to his Aéroscaphe, a combination hydrofoil/aircraft, which he entered in the motor boat and aviation contests at Monaco. Henry Farman's use of the Gnome at the famous Rheims aircraft meet that year brought it to prominence, when he won the Grand Prix for the greatest non-stop distance flown——and also set a world record for endurance flight. The very first successful seaplane flight, of Henri Fabre's Le Canard, was powered by a Gnome Omega on March 28, 1910, near Marseille. Production of Gnome rotaries increased rapidly, with some 4,000 being produced before World War I, and Gnome also produced a two-row version (the 100 h.p. Double Omega), the larger 80 hp Gnome Lambda and the 160 hp two-row Double Lambda. By the standards of other engines of the period, the Gnome was considered not particularly temperamental, and was credited as the first engine able to run for ten hours between overhauls. In 1913 the Seguin brothers introduced the new Monosoupape ("single valve") series, which replaced inlet valves in the pistons by using a single valve in each cylinder head, which doubled as inlet and exhaust valve. The engine speed was controlled by varying the opening time and extent of the exhaust valves using levers acting on the valve tappet rollers, a system later abandoned due to valves burning. The weight of the Monosoupape was slightly less than the earlier two-valve engines,