Léon Bollée (1 April 1870 – 16 December 1913) was a French automobile manufacturer and inventor. Life Bollée's family were well known bellfounders and his father, Amédée Bollée (1844–1917), was the major pioneer in the automobile industry who produced several steam cars. Both Léon Bollée and his older brother Amédée-Ernest-Marie (1867–1926) became automobile manufacturers. The third brother was Camille. Early invention In 1885, at the age of 14, an early inventor, Léon Bollée made himself known by the construction of a kind of pedalo. Calculating machines In 1887, in order to help his father, a founder of bells, and to avoid errors in many calculations required for their manufacture, Bollée began work on three calculating machines: the Direct Multiplier, the Calculating Board and the Arithmographe. Bollée's Multiplier was the second successful direct-multiplying calculator (the first was Ramón Verea's) and it won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Three versions of the large multiplier and several smaller machines were developed by Bollée and the devices were patented in France, Belgium, Germany, the USA and Hungary. Transport Steam locomotive In 1892, his father, Amédée Bollée produced a steam locomotive for the Chemin de fer du Finistère. Automobiles Bollée and his father entered a steam car, La Nouvelle, in the 1895 Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race and Bollée went on to develop a gasoline-powered vehicle in 1895 which was entered in the 1896 Paris–Marseille–Paris. Car manufacturing Bollée founded the company Léon Bollée Automobiles in 1895 in Le Mans. In 1896 he patented and began manufacturing the three-wheeled vehicles he had invented in 1895 which he called the Voiturette. The position of the passenger, at the front, earned the Voiturette the nickname "Mother-in-law killer" ("Tue Belle-mère", in French). These had a horizontal motor and were equipped with rubber tires. A new model with many modifications was brought to the 1897 Paris-Dieppe race, driven by Paul Jamin, and the Paris-Trouville race and won both events with respective speeds of and . In April 1898, in France, Bollée won the "Critérium des Motocycle". In 1903, Bollée produced his first big car. The company built two 4-cylinder models, one 28hp 4.6-liter, and one 45hp 8-litre engine. Both won the "Blackport Southport Speed Trials", in September 1904, in front of Dorothy Levitt's Gladiator. In 1908, when Wilbur Wright visited France to demonstrate the Wright Brothers aircraft, Bollée let Wilbur use his Le Mans automobile factory. Bollée's wife Carlotta (née