This account has never been shy to click on Wikipedia links so you don't have to, and today's particular bin of antiquity is the collected output of the Farman Aviation Works.

You may well have seen this thing stinking up your timeline...

I've previously compared Farman to a Gallic Blackburn (company motto: "Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair"), and it's hard to avoid the suspicion that the two were involved in some sort of mutually destructive trans-Manche chonk-off.

The Farman story starts with this - the Voisin-Farman I.

In 1907-08 this was the most advanced and capable aircraft in the world.

But what I particularly like about that photo is that if you cover up the tail it looks like Henri Farman is riding a smaller biplane backwards.

Having fallen out with Voisin when the latter sold an airplane to the dastardly English, Henri Farman started building his own aircraft, the Farman III.

This was so iconic that "Farman-type" was a regular description of other aircraft.

And in 1910 his brother Maurice had a go.

After the brothers combined to form their own company, Avions Farman, Maurice's decidedly less delicate aesthetic was to become something of a trademark.

Maurice Farman's design was adapted into the military MF7 "Longhorn", one of which holds the unfortunate distinction of being the first aircraft recorded as lost in aerial combat.

That it was in service with the Japanese at the time shows how widespread Farman designs were.

And the more conventional - to a modern eye - MF11 was the first plane to bomb an enemy ship, apparently whilst taking time out from chasing pigeons (increasingly I've come to realise Hana-Barbera were making a documentary)

Without the front elevator, the MF 11 was predictably nicknamed the Shorthorn. It's the plane that Biggles learnt to fly in.

Not going to lie though - the conversion to firing rockets ON A WOOD AND FABRIC PLANE terrifies me.

As you should know by now I'm far more interested in the failures and oddballs, and Farman were just about to hit their stride with the HF20.

Several engines were tried to find one powerful enough, and by the time they did the plane was already obsolete.

And I'm not casting aspersions about the F40, but these lads are noticeably happier painting their aircraft than flying it...

Meanwhile the F30 looked more modern, but was dangerously difficult to handle. The Service Technique de l'Aéronautique sent Farman away to think again.

They did.

This somehow made it worse. The military declined to make any orders other than "please take it away".

And the F31 was cancelled less than three months into development when the Germans took pity on French aviators and surrendered.

And no, I've got no idea what that propeller is doing down there either.

Post-war Farman moved into the civilian market, initially by converting their designs for bombers. The F60 Goliath is credited with the creation of the early airlines, possibly by inspiring pilots to flee France - and this thing - as quickly as possible.

People love to talk about the glamour and romance of early air travel.

Here Switzerland's answer to the Beatles await their crew. They may be waiting some time.

And honestly, I have never previously seen a satirical aircraft registration, but here we have it - this perfectly captures perfectly the noise emanating from everyone on board.

The next civilian effort was the F120 family, which is where we came in. This family is ooky and they're kooky, and not at all good looky.

Unbelievably, these are all fundamentally the same design. 2, 3 or 4 engines could be specified, depending on how much you trusted them.

I'm also unconvinced by the seating. It's not obvious that these wicker chairs are bolted down. What's going to happen to the centre of gravity on take off is left as an exercise for the reader.

And this...

This one isn't a looker either.

Please make it stop.

The F180 Bluebird suggests that Farman were starting to appreciate the commercial benefits of aircraft that were allowed to taxi to the departure gate without a bag over their head.

The prospects of a "trans-Atlantic airliner" with a range of 600 miles were nonetheless limited.

Farman also produced a handful of smaller civilian planes. The Sport was a biplane that could be ordered as a glider variant.

One Sport was modified to take the centre section of a Goliath wing as a monoplane and...

No.

Just no.

And I'm not much more convinced by their other civilian designs...

The F190 was carefully designed so that clearance under low bridges wasn't an issue...

...but the F400 looked conventional enough from the outside.

On the inside the control stick hung from the ceiling. It's like they just couldn't help themselves, isn't it?

Meanwhile Farman never gave up trying to regain the military market. Most of them were failures.

The F110 was removed from service after a year when it was belatedly realised Farman had no idea how to build with aluminium. Important bits like wings kept falling off.

The Super Goliath wasn't.

In something of a recurring theme it too was withdrawn for structural weaknesses.

The F160 never made it beyond prototype stage, due to failing to meet the performance targets.

A wing section you could camp in can't have helped.

A procession of oddballs kept leaving the factory, none of which were taken up. For all the criticism of the French Air Force in the inter-war period, you can't fault its purchasing decisions here.

At some point Farman unwisely tried to squeeze a 33mm cannon into one of their designs.

In a typical Farman flourish, full power inevitably bunted it into a dive.

In 1936 Farman was subsumed into the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Centre as part of the process of nationalisation.

It's hard to argue that this was a major loss to the beauty of flight.

Or, come to think of it, the sanity of watercraft.

Shame, really.

PS - thanks to everyone who's been sharing Farman's oeuvre with me over the last week or so.

Can you please stop it now? Please? Can't we just have some nice comforting Blackburn monstrosities again?