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In 1877, the Italian engineer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer Enrico Forlanini developed an unmanned helicopter powered by a steam engine. It rose to a height of 13 meters (43 feet), where it remained for 20 seconds, after a vertical take-off from a park in Milan. [41]
- Overview
- History
A helicopter is an aircraft with one or more power-driven horizontal propellers or rotors that enable it to take off and land vertically, to move in any direction, or to remain stationary in the air.
Who designed the first helicopter capable of crewed free flight?
Paul Cornu was a French engineer who designed and built the first helicopter to perform a crewed free flight. Cornu’s twin-rotor craft, powered by a 24-horsepower engine, flew briefly on November 13, 1907, at Coquainvilliers, near Lisieux.
What is the principle of helicopter flight?
A helicopter obtains its lifting power using a rotating airfoil (the rotor). Its main airfoil is the rotating blade assembly mounted atop its fuselage on a hinged shaft (mast) connected with the engine and flight controls. The tail of a helicopter is somewhat elongated compared to that of an airplane, and the rudder smaller and fitted with a small antitorque rotor.
How is a helicopter different from an airplane?
One important characteristic of the history of vertical flight is the pervasive human interest in the subject; inventors in many countries took up the challenge over the years, achieving varying degrees of success. The history of vertical flight began at least as early as about 400 ce; there are historical references to a Chinese kite that used a rotary wing as a source of lift. Toys using the principle of the helicopter—a rotary blade turned by the pull of a string—were known during the Middle Ages. During the latter part of the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci made drawings of a helicopter that used a spiral airscrew to obtain lift. A toy helicopter, using rotors made out of the feathers of birds, was presented to the French Academy of Science in 1784 by two artisans, Launoy and Bienvenu; this toy forecast a more successful model created in 1870 by Alphonse Pénaud in France.
The first scientific exposition of the principles that ultimately led to the successful helicopter came in 1843 from Sir George Cayley, who is also regarded by many as the father of fixed-wing flight. From that point on, a veritable gene pool of helicopter ideas was spawned by numerous inventors, almost entirely in model or sketch form. Many were technical dead ends, but others contributed a portion of the ultimate solution. In 1907 there were two significant steps forward. On September 29, the Breguet brothers, Louis and Jacques, under the guidance of the physiologist and aviation pioneer Charles Richet made a short flight in their Gyroplane No. 1, powered by a 45-horsepower engine. The Gyroplane had a spiderweb-like frame and four sets of rotors. The piloted aircraft lifted from the ground to a height of about two feet, but it was tethered and not under any control. Breguet went on to become a famous name in French aviation, and in time Louis returned to successful work in helicopters. Later, in November, their countryman Paul Cornu, who was a bicycle maker like the Wright brothers, attained a free flight of about 20 seconds’ duration, reaching a height of one foot in a twin-rotor craft powered by a 24-horsepower engine. Another man who, like the Breguets, would flirt with the helicopter, go on to make his name with fixed-wing aircraft, and then later return to the challenge of vertical flight, was Igor Sikorsky, who made some unsuccessful experiments at about the same time.
Britannica Quiz
Transportation and Technology Firsts Quiz
The next 25 years were characterized by two main trends in vertical flight. One was the wide spread of minor successes with helicopters; the second was the appearance and apparent success of the autogiro (also spelled autogyro).
The helicopter saw incremental success in many countries, and the following short review will highlight only those whose contributions were ultimately found in successfully developed helicopters. In 1912 the Danish inventor Jacob Ellehammer made short hops in a helicopter that featured contrarotating rotors and cyclic pitch control, the latter an important insight into the problem of control. On December 18, 1922, a complex helicopter designed by George de Bothezat for the U.S. Army Air Force lifted off the ground for slightly less than two minutes, under minimum control. In France, Argentine inventor Raúl Pateras Pescara, who designed several helicopters in the 1920s and ’30s that applied cyclic pitch control and, if the engine failed, rotor autorotation, set a straight-line distance record on April 18, 1924, of 736 metres (2,415 feet). That same year in France on May 4, Étienne Oehmichen established a distance record for helicopters by flying a circle of a kilometre’s length.
Oct 4, 2019 · Who Invented the Helicopter? The Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) is considered to be the "father" of helicopters, not because he was the first to invent it, but because he invented the first successful helicopter upon which further designs were based.
- Mary Bellis
Many inventors and engineers from all over the world built prototypes of helicopters after 1912, many of which were used in the first two world wars, but in the United States, Igor Sikorsky is credited with creating the first mass-produced helicopter in the history of flight.
Sep 14, 2021 · On September 14, 1939, the VS-300, the world’s first practical helicopter, took flight at Stratford, Connecticut. Designed by Igor Sikorsky and built by the Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, the helicopter was the first to incorporate a single main rotor and tail rotor design.
Oct 16, 2023 · The invention of the internal combustion engine in the late 19th century proved to be a game-changer. Pioneering figures like Emile Berliner and Igor Sikorsky incorporated these engines into their helicopter designs, paving the way for more practical and powerful machines.
The first helicopter-like, motorized aircraft that could rise above the ground (often only a foot or two, and for only seconds) were flown in 1907. It wasn't until the 1930s that the technology advanced enough to allow helicopter flights across substantial distances.
