History
The ACO's history begins with the Automobile Club de la Sarthe, the ancestor of today's ACO, which was founded in the town of Le Mans. In 1906 that group included Amédée Bollée and Paul Jamin, winner of the 1897 Paris-Dieppe race in a Léon Bollée tricar. With the help of the larger Automobile Club de France they organised a race on local public roads, on a 65-mile triangular course connecting Le Mans with Saint-Calais and La Ferté-Bernard. The 12-lap race, titled the Grand Prix de l'ACF, was held over two days and won by Ferenc Szisz driving a Renault, This race, the first Grand Prix, would eventually become the French Grand Prix.
After World War I, the ACO turned its attention to designing a shorter circuit on public roads to the south of the city. The organisation's chief secretary Georges Durand, together with magazine editor Charles Faroux of La Vie Automobile and tyre manufacturer Emile Coquille, came up with the idea for a 24-hour race. The first Le Mans 24 Hours was held on 26 May 1923. The very first entry was lodged with the ACO by John Duff on a Bentley.
Read more about this topic: Automobile Club De L'Ouest
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“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
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—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)