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Zodiac S.A. Business Information, Profile, and History

2 rue Maurice Mallet
92137 lssy-les-Moulineaux
Cedex
France

Company Perspectives:

At Zodiac, our goal is to provide safety and performance in the air and in water. To master these challenging elements, we have consistently focused our entire business on: a global growth strategy to broaden our offering and seek out new synergies; creativity and innovation to optimize products and deliver the best possible; listening to our customers in order to understand the needs of our varied corporate and consumer markets; strict quality control in manufacturing to ensure compliance with the toughest standards; rigorous management methods to give our shareholders the high returns they are entitled to expect.

History of Zodiac S.A.

Zodiac S.A. of France is a world-leading manufacturer of parts and equipment for the aeronautics, airline equipment, and marine-leisure industries. The company's inflatable boats represent more than 40 percent of the worldwide market, a segment the company itself pioneered as early as the 1930s. Through a long list of acquisitions, Zodiac has built itself into a diversified operation with leadership status in such niche product areas as aircraft escape slides, parachute systems, helicopter floats, and flexible fuel tanks (Aeronautics Equipment division); passenger seats and on-board toilets and sanitation systems (Airline Equipment); inflatable boats and rescue rafts, above-ground swimming pools, and related equipment; and inflatable toys (Marine-Leisure). Zodiac's customers include Airbus, Boeing, various departments of defense, and most of the world's civil airlines. The company generates the majority of its sales (64 percent) through the civil aviation sector, including some 28 percent of sales from its aircraft seating operations alone. Zodiac's inflatable boats continue to provide some 13 percent of sales, however, and have made the Zodiac brand name known throughout the boating world. That world has increasingly leaned toward North America, which accounted for 54 percent of Zodiac's sales in 1999. French sales accounted for 17 percent of the company's revenues. The chief architect of Zodiac's growth from a small single-product company in the late 1970s to a diversified manufacturer and distributor with nearly FFr 5.5 billion in annual sales is Chairman and President Jean-Louis Gerondeau. A public company that helped initiate Paris's secondary market in the early 1980s, Zodiac continues to be controlled by its founding families, which hold 30 percent of the company's shares and some 40 percent of voting rights. This position helps to protect the company from the possibility of a hostile takeover.

Aviation Pioneer in the 19th Century

Zodiac was born out of the pioneering efforts of the world's earliest aviators, as the dream of flying became a reality toward the end of the 19th century. Hot-air ballooning, first developed early in the century, remained primarily an adventurer's pastime in France in the late 1870s, when Maurice Mallet took his first balloon flight. Mallet became friends with one of the country's most well-known balloonists, Paul Jovis, and together Mallet and Jovis founded the Union Aéronautique de France to develop new ballooning and aeronautics techniques and equipment. Mallet took over the flying of the association's balloons after Jovis's death in 1891 and became world-renowned when he broke the record for the longest balloon flight, flying from Paris to Walhen, Germany, over three days in 1892.

These and other ballooning triumphs helped spark a surge of popular interest in ballooning at the end of the century, and Mallet and two friends formed the partnership Société Mallet, Mélandri et de Pitray to open a 'ballooning park' in Paris's Bois de Boulogne in 1897. The company quickly turned to manufacturing balloons for others and was renamed Ateliers de Constructions Aeronautiques Maurice Mallet to emphasize its new direction in 1899.

Mallet's company grew along with the interest in aviation then sweeping France. While others pursued developments of so-called 'heavier-than-air' craft, Mallet continued to research designs in lighter-than-air craft, developing new fabrics and technologies and then turning to the construction of dirigibles as well. For this, Mallet formed a new company, the partnership Société Fran&ccedilse des Ballons Dirigeables in 1908.

Mallet introduced the prototype for a new type of foldable, dirigible balloon that was easy to transport and set up. Targeted not simply to private ballooning enthusiasts, but also to the business sector--for use as an advertising medium--Mallet introduced the first Zodiac collapsible balloon in 1909. At the same time, Mallet also put into place an international sales network, through a system of agents located in the United States, Japan, Canada, and the former Austro-Hungarian empire. In that year, Mallet changed his company's name again, now to Société Fran&ccedilse des Ballons Dirigeables et d'Aviation Zodiac.

The addition of 'Aviation' to the company's name signaled its growing interest in heavier-than-air craft, and in 1909 Mallet built its first biplane, for French aviator Maurice Farman. By the outbreak of World War I, Mallet's original workshops had been transformed into full-fledged manufacturing facilities. The company was called to support the war effort, focusing its attention wholly on balloon and dirigible craft for the French war effort. When balloons proved impractical as bombing craft, Mallet opened a second facility for airplane manufacturing, turning out more than eight airplanes each month by the end of the war.

Yet the end of the war meant the sudden loss in defense contracts, leaving the company in a precarious financial position. The company began to branch out from aeronautics for the first time, adding its first marine products--patrol boats for the French navy--in the 1920s. Meanwhile, the company continued to develop its lighter-than-air craft, introducing a semi-rigid dirigible in 1930.

Soon after, Zodiac's expertise in inflatable fabrics, techniques, and materials led one of its engineers, Pierre Debroutelle, to begin work on developing other types of craft. In 1934, Debroutelle finished a small inflatable kayak. The prototype caught the attention of the French navy, which commissioned Zodiac to build an inflatable boat capable of carrying torpedos and other bombs.

Zodiac's participation in the French war effort sent the company underground during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Nonetheless, Debroutelle continued experimenting in secret on his inflatable boat concept using scrap materials. Meanwhile, the invention of outboard motors during the war years gave new possibilities to Debroutelle's designs. In 1946, Zodiac debuted the first of its U-shaped Zodiac boats.

Postwar Leisure Leader

The appearance of the jet engine during the war years turned public attention away from dirigible craft. Zodiac continued to manufacture balloons and other craft, primarily for advertising uses. To generate revenues, the company diversified into the manufacture of other products, including a line of office furniture and manure spreaders. Although the company continued development of its inflatable boat designs, its sole market for this craft came from the defense industry, which adopted Zodiac's inflatable for life rafts. Doubts about the Zodiac designs' seaworthiness were dispelled by several voyages made by Alain Bombard in the Zodiac Mark III. The company quickly gained the leading position as a supplier of life boats and other rescue craft in France.

The postwar economic boom, and the rise of an entirely new phenomenon--the so-called leisure market--were to transform Zodiac. With both time and money on their hands, French consumers turned toward new leisure activities, and boating became a popular past time. The Zodiac boats quickly captured a leading share of the new market for inflatable leisure craft. The company also gained new recognition when famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau commissioned the company to build the Amphritrite. Meanwhile, the company was branching out into the burgeoning aerospace industry, designing special measuring balloons for the French CNES space research center. The company, which simplified its name to Zodiac S.A. in 1965, also moved to establish itself on the international market, launching the partnership Zodiac Española S.A. in Spain. The company took full control of this subsidiary in 1968, before forming a subsidiary in the United States, in Annapolis, Maryland, two years later. By then, Zodiac had captured the leading position in the inflatables market in France and had taken a place among the world's leading manufacturers of inflatable boats. The company's growing participation in the aerospace industry led to the creation of a dedicated subsidiary, Zodiac Space. Yet the company's primary product remained its leisure boating range.

The downturn of the world economy, following the Oil Embargo of 1973, nearly brought Zodiac to bankruptcy. As the company's focus had increasingly narrowed around its boating products, the company was especially hard hit by the collapse of the leisure market, as consumers weathered a new inflationary period. Recognizing the need to take the company into new directions, Zodiac brought in a new management team, led by Jean-Louis Gerondeau as chairman, in 1973.

Gerondeau initially sought to diversify the company into other sports leisure categories, building on the Zodiac brand name, while protecting itself from the seasonal nature of its core boating market. The company proved unable to find a suitable acquisition target, however, and instead placed its efforts into enhancing its international network. In 1977, the company established a Greek subsidiary, Zodiac Hellas, following that with an implantation in Italy in 1978, through Zodiac Italia, and then Germany, with the opening of its Zodiac Deutschland subsidiary in 1979.

Diversifying for the 21st Century

That same year brought Zodiac a new opportunity for diversifying its operations. Yet the company's acquisition of Aérazur, which had been a rival dirigible maker between the world wars, took Zodiac away from its sports leisure base. Whereas Zodiac had concentrated on inflatable boats after World War II, Aérazur had turned to the manufacture of aeronautic fabrics. The merger of Aérazur into Zodiac proved more than complementary, since the two companies were able to take advantage of each other's expertise and technology. With Aérazur, Zodiac turned toward the aerospace market--a segment that later accounted for two-thirds of the company's sales.

Zodiac quickly moved to boost its new aeronautics division, acquiring two more French companies--EFA, Bombard-L'Angevinière in 1980, as well as a major share in Sicma, a leading maker of airplane seats. The company also bought up Sevylor, then Europe's leading inflatable products manufacturer, in 1981, adding that company's range of inflatable toys, rafts, and boats. The following year, Zodiac once again strengthened its international presence, opening subsidiaries in Holland and the United Kingdom. By 1983, eager to continue its acquisition drive, Zodiac went public, becoming the first company to receive a listing on the new secondary market (the French version of the OTC) launched by the Paris bourse. In that year the company posted annual sales of FFr 709 million.

By the middle of the 1980s, Zodiac, which had risen to the leading ranks in the French domestic market, was prepared to raise its international profile. The company began a series of foreign acquisitions that were to transform the company from a small French corporation to one of the leaders in its markets--with the bulk of its sales coming from North America. The first step toward this transformation came in 1987, when the company acquired Air Cruisers of Belmar, New Jersey. The following year the company took the still bigger step of acquiring Pioneer Aerospace Corporation, based in South Windsor, Connecticut. Zodiac also had been enhancing its operations in Canada. After establishing its own distribution subsidiary, Zodiac Inflatable Technologies, in Toronto, the company moved to take over all of its Canadian distribution activities, acquiring the formerly independent company Zodiac Marine Ltd. in 1987, before taking majority control of chief Canadian competitor Hurricane Rescue Craft Inc. These three Canadian operations were merged into a new Zodiac subsidiary, Zodiac Hurricane Technologies Inc. in 1991.

The following year, Zodiac's acquisition of Weber Aircraft Inc., with operations in Texas and California producing airplane seating, helped consolidate the company's newest division, that of Airline Equipment, firmly establishing the company's presence in that market. Raising its stake in Sicma Aero Seat to 100 percent that same year also boosted the Airline Equipment division and made the company one of the world's leaders in that sector.

Zodiac's diversification as well as its growth on the international front helped protect it from the crisis that rocked the aerospace industry in the early 1990s. The worldwide recession, the end of the Cold War, shrinking defense budgets, and a collapse of the airline passenger market due to hostilities surrounding the Persian Gulf War had combined to cripple the aerospace industry. The company's sales and profits continued to grow, and by the mid-1990s, when the aerospace sector rebounded, the company showed double-digit growth, reaching annual sales of FFr 3.4 billion and net profits of FFr 201.7 million in 1995.

By then, the company's leisure-marine operations, which received a boost with the acquisition of swimming pool equipment manufacturer Fountainhead Technologies, accounted for only about 40 percent of its sales. Aerospace and airline equipment had reached 68 percent of sales, in time for a new boom in the industry, as passengers once again returned to the skies and airlines returned to enhancing their fleets. In 1998, Zodiac turned its interest to a new area of the airplane, when it acquired MAG Aerospace, a leading maker of toilets and sanitation systems for airplanes. That same year, the company acquired longtime rival Avon Inflatables Ltd., giving the company a commanding position in the United Kingdom's inflatable marine products category.

In the mid-1990s, Zodiac made its first moves to diversify beyond the aerospace and marine markets and into the automobile market. The rising demand for airbag systems for automobiles represented an opportunity for Zodiac, with its longstanding expertise in inflatable products. As such, the company set up its own air bag manufacturing operations under its Aérazur subsidiary. By the end of the decade, Zodiac's air bag operations had already reached sales of more than FFr 350 million.

Zodiac continued to make new acquisitions at the century's close. In 1999, the company acquired Nautive, the leisure life raft division of Germany's Autoflug, further strengthening Zodiac's worldwide leadership position in inflatable boats. Later in 1999, Zodiac added to its aeronautics operations when it acquired France's Intertechnique SA.

The Intertechnique acquisition prompted the company to reorganize its aeronautics operations into the newly named Zodiac Aerospace subsidiary. Formed in June 2000, Zodiac Aerospace was composed of three divisions: Aero Safety Systems; Airline Equipment; and Aircraft Systems. The Intertechnique acquisition helped raise the company's revenues to nearly FFr 5.5 billion and solidified Zodiac's transformation from a pioneer in air transport to one of the 21st century's major aeronautics manufacturers.

Principal Subsidiaries: Aérazur; Air Cruisers Company (U.S.A.); Amfuel (U.S.A.); Avon Inflatables Ltd. (U.K.); Barracuda South Africa; DBC (Canada); Mongram Sanitation (U.S.A.); Muskin Leisure Products Inc. (U.S.A.); Plastriemo; Parachutes de France; Pioneer Aerospace Corporation (U.S.A.); Sevylor International; Sicma Aero Seat; Sicma Aero Seat Services Inc. (U.S.A.); Weber Aircraft Inc. (U.S.A.); Zodiac Espanola SA (Spain); Zodiac Group Australia Pty Ltd.; Zodiac Hurricane Technologies (Canada); Zodiac International; Zodiac Italia; Zodiac-Kern GmbH (Germany); Zodiac Pool Care, Inc.

Principal Competitors: K & F Industries, Inc.; B/E Aerospace, Inc.; Buderus.

Related information about Zodiac

A zone of fixed stars, approximately 16属 in width, which marks the apparent courses of the Sun, Moon, and planets (apart from Pluto) about the Earth. Early astronomers projected patterns on to this area of sky, creating 12 groupings or constellations. It is important to distinguish between constellations - rather ill-defined star groups of variable size - and signs, an idealized version occupying equal 30属 segments. The sidereal zodiac moves relative to the position of the Sun at the (northern) spring equinox. The tropical zodiac simply takes the equinoxial position as a starting point, irrespective of the underlying constellation. Only rarely do these two zodiacs coincide. On the 21st of each month (approximately) the Sun appears to change sign in the tropical zodiac, from Aries through Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius (Scorpio), Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. The disposition of the planets within the signs of the zodiac furnishes important information to the astrologer.

For other uses, see zodiac (disambiguation)

The term zodiac (from Greek zodiakos kyklos, "circle of little animals", from zodiaion, the diminutive of zoon "animal") denotes several places where a circle of twelve animals occurs. Indo-European cultures developed a zodiac of twelve signs associated with a yearly cycle and with constellations of stars that lie along the apparent path of the Sun across the heavens (the ecliptic). Eventually, "ancient astronomers" (Powell 2004) divided those constellations into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first known celestial coordinate system: a coordinate system that boasts some advantages over modern systems (such as equatorial coordinate system or ecliptic coordinate system). The zodiac is also understood as a region of the celestial sphere that includes a band of eight arc degrees above and below the ecliptic, and therefore encompasses the paths of the Moon and the naked eye planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). As with the Chinese zodiac, Indo-European astrologers understand the movement of the planets and the Sun through the zodiac as a method to explain and predict events on Earth.

The zodiac symbols used in Western Astrology are early modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times. The characters are encoded in unicode at positions U+2648 to U+2653 (hexadecimal numbers): .

Zodiac celestial coordinate systems

For any spherical celestial coordinate system one needs to define an equatorial plane and designate an origin for longitude. From these definitions longitudinal meridians perpendicular to the equatorial plane meet at the north and south poles of the celestial sphere and one can precisely specify a unique position on the sphere.

First, the zodiac coordinate system designates the ecliptic as the equatorial plane. This tilt is partly due to the Earth's precession as it gyrates and rotates on its axis. It contributes to the divergence between a tropical year and a sidereal year and thus contributes to the precession of the equinoxes which marks the difference between tropical and sidereal celestial coordinate systems.

Second, a system of coordinates must normally specify an origin (0属 point) for longitude. One reason this system of coordinates was particularly useful in antiquity is that writing large numbers was difficult before the introduction of arabic numbers. The zodiac system of coordinates kept every number below ninety (the highest value for zodiac latitudes). Since the constellations along the ecliptic varied in size, defining 12 equal signs of 30属 each did require an arbitrary assignment of boundaries roughly corresponding to the ecliptic constellations fact.

It is believed many of the classical astronomers specified zodiac signs using two bright stars near the ecliptic and opposite each other to serve as equatorial nodes or poles (not longitudinal poles): Aldebaran and Antares in the constellations Taurus and Scorpius respectively. From these two stars then the remaining equatorial boundaries of the 12 signs of the zodiac follow (see Powell 2004).

Below are the Roman names of the signs of the zodiac (with the ecliptic longitudes of their first points These figures represent the equivalent J2000.0 ecliptic longitudes for the sidereal zodiac described here in this article. Pisces (330属)

Sidereal versus tropical

The celestial coordinate system described above is what astronomers call a sidereal system of coordinates. In other words it defines the coordinates in relation to what ancient astronomers called the fixed stars (as opposed to the planets other than Earth which were called wandering stars). In time the ancient astronomers such as Hipparchus discovered these fixed stars were not fixed relative to the Earth's tropical year. Due, in part, to the precession of the Earth discussed above, the Earth completed its orbit after it has already completed the tropical cycle: for example: for the cycle of the Sun starting directly over the tropic of Cancer then to the tropic of Capricorn and return to the tropic of Cancer again. It is remarkable that Hipparchus in the second century BC could recognize and document such a subtle process which is now known as the precession of the equinoxes.

Some modern astronomers began to mark the stars according to a tropical zodiac (or other tropical coordinate systems such as the equatorial coordinate system). The term may be derived from the constellation of Aries, but this point instead marks the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox for a specified epoch. The current epoch used is J2000.0 which indicates the position of the stars at the time and day of the vernal equinox in the year 2000 of a Julian calendar (a sidereal calendar) calibrated so that January 1st 2000 at 00:00 TT coincides with the same time on the common Gregorian calendar.fact

The use of the phrase "first point in Aries" causes some confusion when considering sidereal versus tropical systems of coordinates. During the time of Ptolemy's observations and cataloging of stars the sidereal and tropical longitudinal origins differed by a magnitude of perhaps less than 2属. In terms of the tropical system, this places the first point in Aries (in other words, the vernal equinox) in the Pisces constellation, near the projection of the NGC 7787 spiral galaxy. For example Cyril Fagan's sidereal zodiac is offset from the J2000.0 tropical zodiac by greater than 39属 (as of 1977). This difference between the position of fixed stars in the tropical and sidereal coordinate systems is called the Ayanamsa. This may seem like something of little consequence, but why bother drawing neat boundaries around constellations if they inherently become erratic in the dominant coordinate system in use then and now.

Finally, since the zodiac system uses the ecliptic rather than the terrestrial equator for its equatorial plane it is not susceptible to the drifting of stars across the celestial equator as in the commonly used equatorial coordinate system (right ascension, declination). variously specified coordinate systems for this very reason (Ptolemy 1998).

These advantages make the zodiac coordinate system a very efficient system of coordinates in terms of requiring very little human-hours of labor to use and maintain: issues particularly important to early astronomers, typically working in often in isolation from one another.

The key disadvantage of a zodiac system of coordinates will manifest as a problem, if the nodal stars that serve as its fixed reference points for the system exhibit significant proper motion so that within the system of coordinates every other star appears to move dramatically in unison. The only other sidereal coordinate system in common use today (that shares many of the zodiac?s advantages) is the galactic coordinate system.

Zodiac in astrology

Astrologers use astronomical observations of the movements of the night sky for divinatory purposes. The zodiac remains in use in modern astrology, though the issue of tropical versus sidereal coordinate systems is even more fundamental in (see sidereal versus tropical above, tropical astrology and sidereal astrology). At issue in the debate is whether the signs should be defined in terms of signs roughly aligned with the constellations of the same name (for sidereal astrologers) or whether the signs should be defined in terms of zones derived from nodal points defined by Earth's motion during a tropical year. The selection of two different astronomical coordinate systems implies the Sun moves through each sign at different times of the year, leading to different mapping of the signs to the days of the year for each of these systems.

Regardless of whether the tropical or sidereal definition of the zodiac is chosen, astrologers chart the positions of the Sun and planets in relation to the zodiacal signs. The horoscope is used to associate properties of a sign with the properties of planets positioned in that sign.

Hindu astrology and the Zodiac

Traditional Hindu astrology has a siderial coordinate zodiac system with twelve signs. The names of the Hindu zodiacal signs, or s, are similar to Graeco-Babylonian signs, apparently as a result of Indo-Greek contact:

"ram" (Aries)
"bull" (Taurus)
"a pair" (Gemini)
"crab" (Cancer)
"lion" (Leo)
"girl" (Virgo)
, from "balance" (Libra)
"scorpion" (Scorpius), also kaurpi, loaned from the Greek
"bow, arc", "armed with a bow" (Sagittarius)
"antelope", also "sea-monster" (Capricornus)
"pitcher, water-pot" (Aquarius)
"fish", also after specific kinds of fish (Pisces)

This "Hindu zodiac" (, ) thus has similarities to Greek zodiac. The Graeco-Babylonian system of twelve signs overlays the native Hindu system of nine grahas or houses. The difference between the timing of Hindu s sidereal and the Western zodiacal signs is due to the sidereal coordinate system used by the Hindus, fixing the signs to the celestial sphere rather than to the Earth.

Other zodiac astrologies

Chinese astrology also has a system of twelve signs sometimes also referred to as "zodiac". The animals of the Chinese Zodiac are: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit (or hare), dragon, snake, horse, sheep (or goat), monkey, rooster (or phoenix), dog, pig (or boar) For a list of how these animals map to the months and years see Chinese astrology. There is also a Chinese lunar zodiac comprised of twenty-eight lunar "mansions", each corresponding to a Chinese constellation.

Beyond the traditional Chinese system, In New Age or Occultist movements there are sometimes claims of even other systems such as a "Celtic zodiac"www.shadowdrake.com/zodiac.htmlhttp://www.shadowdrake.com/zodiac.html based on the lunisolar Celtic calendar, or a "Galactic zodiac".www.geocities.com/astrologyzodiacs/index.htm Other evidence suggests Mayan, Incan and Aztec cultures of the Western hemisphere also noted celestial events along the zodiac. But the marking of seasons by constellations may go back to 5,000 BC.WorldBook Encyclopedia (2001) The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates perhaps in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy as early as the 1st millennium BC (likely during Median/"Neo-Babylonian" times) (Powell 2004).

It is not entirely clear how ancient astronomers responded to this phenomenon of precession once they discovered it. Today, some read Ptolemy as dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead: in other words, one fixed to the cycle of the Earth's seasonal cycle rather than its orbital cycle. So Ptolemy's response to the issue of precession is that the zodiac moves through the equinox and also he makes it clear he understands that the equinox moves through the zodiac.

The zodiacal signs remain in use as the basis of an ecliptic coordinate system, though modern astronomers tend to use an equatorial coordinate systems since Early Modern times. One can see the use of the sidereal coordinate system as late as 1,000 AD from Hermannus Contractus in his de mensura astrolabii liber who gives the locations of stars in stereographic projection for the construction of an astrolabe, There he gives the zodiac coordinate of Antares as 14. Scorpius, equalling a J2000.0 ecliptic longitude of 224属 (the 14th degree from the beginning of Scorpius at 210属).

The zodiacal symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times. zodiac signs The signs of the zodiac do not necessarily coincide with the actual constellations for which they are named. and especially due to the precession of the equinoxes for the tropical system of coordinates, the constellations should not be confused with zodiac signs. As described above, due to precession the tropical signs have moved away from their corresponding constellations, so that today, the beginning of the tropical sign of Aries (defined as the position of the Sun on the vernal equinox) lies somewhere within the constellation Pisces. This table provides a comparison between the dates the Sun enters and passes away from the zodiac signs and constellations as defined by various specifications.

Note the ecliptic passes through a thirteenth constellation (or more depending upon the arbitrary opinions of astronomers of any given century), Ophiuchus (the serpent), as already recognized in Ptolemy's Almagest (Ptolemy 1998), without there being any sign corresponding to Ophiuchus (since zodiac signs are zodiac signs and constellations are constellations). When being arbitrary, there are always coincidences.

The following table compares the Gregorian dates on which the sun enters

a sign in the Ptolemaic tropical zodiac;
a sign in the Hindu sidereal system; note that the sidereal system of Cyril Fagan, introduced in 1944, is again different, with Aries beginning on 30 April.
the astronomical constellation by the same name, with constellation boundaries as defined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union.

The dates can vary by as much as 2 days from year to year, depending on the cycle of leap years.

Sign	meaning, symbol	Dates of Sun's presence			Brightest Star	Elements of the zodiac	Quality	Ruling Planet
Sign	meaning, symbol	tropical zodiac	sidereal (Jyotisha) zodiac	Constellation (IAU definition as of 1977)	Brightest Star	Elements of the zodiac	Quality	Ruling Planet
Aries	"ram"	March 21 – April 19	April 14 – May 14	Aries, April 19 – May 14	Alpha Arietis	Fire	Cardinal	Mars
Taurus	"bull"	April 20 – May 20	May 15 – June 14	Taurus, May 14 – June 21	Aldebaran	Earth	Fixed	Venus
Gemini	"twins"	May 21 – June 20	June 15 – July 16	Gemini, June 21 – July 21	Pollux (star)	Air	Mutable	Mercury
Cancer	"crab"	June 21 – July 22	July 17 – August 16	Cancer, July 21 – August 11	Beta Cancri	Water	Cardinal	the Moon
Leo	"lion"	July 23 – August 22	August 17 – September 16	Leo, August 11 – September 17	Regulus	Fire	Fixed	the Sun
Virgo	"virgin"	August 23 – September 22	September 17 – October 17	Virgo, September 17 – October 31	Spica	Earth	Mutable	Mercury
Libra	"scales"	September 23 – October 22	October 18 – November 16	Libra, October 31 – November 23	Beta Librae	Air	Cardinal	Venus
Scorpio	"scorpion"	October 23 – November 22	November 17 – December 15	Scorpius, November 23 – November 30	Antares	Water	Fixed	Pluto/Mars
—	—	—	—	Ophiuchus, November 30 – December 18	Alpha Ophiuchi	—	—	—
Sagittarius	"archer"	November 23 – December 21	December 16 – January 14	Sagittarius, December 18 – January 19	Epsilon Sagittarii	Fire	Mutable	Jupiter
Capricorn	"horned goat"	December 22 – January 19	January 15 – February 12	Capricornus, January 19 – February 16	Delta Capricorni	Earth	Cardinal	Saturn
Aquarius	"water bearer"	January 20 – February 18	February 13 – March 14	Aquarius, February 16 – March 12	Beta Aquarii	Air	Fixed	Uranus/Saturn
Pisces	"fish"	February 19 – March 20	March 15 – April 13	Pisces, March 12 – April 19	Eta Piscium	Water	Mutable	Neptune/Jupiter

Mnemonic for the zodiac

A traditional mnemonic: Project Gutenberg ebook "An Alphabet Of Old Friends" see Z for Zodiac.

Chronology

Key Dates:
1879: Maurice Mallet and Paul Jovis establish the Union Aéronautique de France.
1897: Mallet forms the Société Mallet, Mélandri et de Pitray in Paris.
1899: Company is renamed Ateliers de Constructions Aeronautiques Maurice Mallet.
1908: Mallet establishes the Société Fran&ccedilse des Ballons Dirigeables; introduces collapsible dirigible.
1909: Company changes name to Société Fran&ccedilse des Ballons Dirigeables et d'Aviation Zodiac; builds first biplane.
1930: Company introduces V10 semi-rigid airship.
1934: Prototype for first inflatable boat is developed.
1946: Company introduces U-shaped Zodiac inflatable boat.
1953: Begins manufacturing lifeboats.
1964: Opens first foreign subsidiary, Zodiac Espanola S.A. in Spain.
1965: Company simplifies name to Zodiac S.A.
1970: New subsidiary Zodiac Space is formed; company launches Zodiac of North America.
1973: Jean-Louis Gerondeau takes over as company chairman.
1983: Zodiac is listed on Paris's secondary market.
1991: Company establishes Zodiac Hurricane Technologies Inc.
2000: Zodiac reorganizes aeronautics operations into Zodiac Aerospace.

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