Biography
John William Dunne was born at Curragh Camp, County Kildare, Ireland, the third son of General Sir John Hart Dunne KCB (1835–1924) and Julia Elizabeth Dunne, Anglo-Irish aristocrats. His later life and career was in England. From an early age, he was interested in scientific areas, and inspired by a Jules Verne novel, at the age of 13, he envisioned a flying machine that needed no steering. He was particularly interested in the flight of the Zanortia seed, whose parachute seeds fly through the air as they are deposited by the wind.
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