He had an inquisitive, inventive mind and took an interest in bird flight at a very young age. After the baccalaureate, he studied at the Institut Assiot in Toulouse, graduating in Ader joined the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi de la France railroad company in and worked there until , when he started filing his first patents, in particular for the "rubber bicycle" in After , Ader focused more of his attention more to aviation, building models, making many plans many drawings and trying to resolve the problems of manned flight: wing load, the propeller's effectiveness, etc.
Meanwhile, he filed a patent for an invention that improved the telephone and invented the theatre-phone in , enabling him to amass a comfortable fortune. Ader continued his work in secret, improving the engine's performances. His goal was to build another aircraft, Avion 2, for which he signed a contract with the army.
But high costs combined with military spending cuts in forced him to give up on the project. Ader was able to finance his third prototype, Avion 3, which he finished in and tested in Satory on 12 and 14 October ; this time, the aircraft flew a distance of meters.
In , however, Ader abandoned his aviation work because the army had withdrawn funding and he was unable to meet the costs alone. He retired to his Muret estate in The next year, when Santos Dumont took off in an aeroplane in Bagatelle, the French press hailed him as "the first Frenchman to fly", prompting Ader to leave retirement and bring his work to the public's attention.
His work's value and importance were recognised late in life, when he was named a Commander of the Legion of Honour in Vincent Auriol was one of the most important figures in contemporary French history. He earned the baccalaureate in Latin and Greek in and a law degree in , the same year that he joined the socialist federation of Haute-Garonne.
