René Lorin was the French engineer who invented the ramjet in 1908 - Jean Villey, a French physician, published the detailed theory of the ramjet.

The Leduc 0.10 was a French research aircraft and one of the first aircraft to fly powered solely by a ramjet. Ramjets cannot produce thrust at zero airspeed and so cannot move from a standing start. It has to be carried aloft by a parasite aircraft, hence, the display in the Hall des Prototypes. The pilot controlled the aircraft from within the inner shell and the first powered flight from atop an Languedoc mother ship was made in April 1949 over Toulouse. The two initial prototypes both crashed but this third prototype completed 83 test flights.