In 1905, Louis Blériot established a partnership with Gabriel Voisin to design and build airplanes. This short-lived collaboration would result in two failures - the Type III and Type IV - and would eventually be dissolved in November 1906. The unsuccesful attempts at building viable prototypes convinced Blériot that a change in paradigm was needed to achieve a powered flight and thus - as all his previous models had been biplanes - he designed and built his first monoplane prototype.

The plane managed its center of gravity by putting the engine at the back of its fuselage, immediately next to the pilot, and extending the rest of the structure towards the front. This unorthodox configuration (even for the time), with what looked like an elongated neck protruding forwards, drove Blériot to call his prototype the "Canard" ("Duck"). Ironically, this architecture proved unstable and the operational history of the plane was mostly comprised of damages to its undercarriage. Nevertheless it managed to take off for brief periods of time on two occasions on the 5th and 9th of April 1907, starting what would end up being a very successful career for Blériot.

The Type V was by no means the first plane to feature this architecture (after all, the Wright Flyer followed the same logic), but since Blériot later became a powerhouse among aviation pioneers, it appears that his designation of this prototype became the naming convention of planes with small control surfaces in front of their main wings.

Sources :

- Vintage Aviation News : First Flight of the Blériot V Monoplane

- Louis Blériot, un véritable pionnier de l'aviation (in French)

- "Toute l'aviation" by Edmond Blanc, courtesy of Gallica (in French)

- L’Histoire de l'aviation – des origines à 1914 : 1907. Monoplan Blériot type V « Canard » (in French)