In the program "Historically yours", the journalist David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.

Tuesday, he is interested in the beginnings of an accessory that is only part of the life of the very rich: the private jet.

Every day in 

Historically yours

, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.

This Tuesday, he is looking at a way of getting around, certainly very practical but extremely expensive and polluting: the private jet

“Being rich has a lot of advantages. Like being able to buy more things than poor people, and more expensive things. For example, I who am not rich, I do not own a private jet. The simple fact that rich people own one is remarkable, because a private jet still costs up to 40 million euros. Another remarkable thing, there are more and more people who have a private jet in the world: + 70% in France since 2006, + 90% in Germany + 350% in China ...

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A French first

Why this increase?

Firstly, because there are more and more very rich people.

But also because there are more and more ways to buy several private jets, which is inevitably cheaper.

Finally, today there are some pretty cool ways to exempt yourself from some nasty taxes on private jets.

If you ship your purchase through the Isle of Man, for example, you may be exempt from VAT.

And 20% of 40 million euros… that's a nice sum.

The first private jets date back to the 1920s, when businessmen began to have their own propeller plane.

In particular in the United States, where when you want to do business, you have to travel a lot.

But they weren't exactly jets, because jets are airplanes on which the propeller has been replaced by jet engines.

What makes it possible to go much faster.

So the real take off of the private jet dates, like so many things, to the Glorious Thirty Years.

The plane which is considered by many to be the first private jet is a French plane.

It was called the Maurane-Saulnier 760 and made its first flights in the mid-1950s, with the actress Eva Gabor on board. 

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A mode of transport popularized by Frank Sinatra

But the one who made private jets cool was Frank Sinatra.

In 1964, he bought a state-of-the-art jet.

And apparently one of the main things it got her to do was flirt with Mia Farrow.

Who was 20 at the time, five years younger than his eldest daughter Nancy.

Frank and Mia had already had a first date.

But the singer was in Florida and the actress in Los Angeles, on the other side of the United States.

So he sent his private jet to pick her up, so they could watch a movie he was playing together.

And it didn't go badly since they got married the following year.

But they also divorced two years later.

Today, the private jet has become the symbol of "super-wealth".

And so also the dream of many people who are not rich at all.

A company in Moscow offers for 200 dollars to take a picture of you in a private jet that does not take off, to post on Instagram and make believe that one is rich, when not.

Last thing: I might as well tell you that private jets are not very good for nature.

It even pollutes ten times more per passenger than normal jets.

But that is really a reflection of a poor person.

Because if I could afford to buy myself a jet, I'm sure I would have one.

And I would deal with my environmental bad conscience. "