History of the Helicopter

Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian High-Renaissance great thinker and a polymath, is commonly assumed as the first person to conceive the helicopter, a helicopter-like machine, as it was found among his drawings.

There is also evidence that Chinese and Renaissance Europeans had the design in mind, because among the artefacts found from these civilizations are toys that look like helicopters.

History tells us that various inventors have tried to work out a functional helicopter, but the problem was finding an engine that could make a "blade" whirl with enough power to create the "lift" or vertical thrust in order to get off the ground.


In 1907, a helicopter designed by Paul Cornu was able to get off the ground and in 1923, a Spaniard named Juan de la Cierva successfully flew an "autogiro" but it wasn't until 1930 that a practical craft was developed, worked on by Russian-American Igor Sikorsky, a pioneer of aviation.


Sikorsky lived a life with prominent parents and closely allied with the Tsar. He was born in Kiev on May 25, 1889. As a boy, he took interest in da Vinci's aeronautical drawings particularly the helicopter, and pursued an education focused on aeronautics. As a teenager, he studied in Germany and travelled to Paris, then the best learning for the aeronautical design concepts.  While in Paris he bought a 25 horsepower (hp) engine to power a single-blade design he had created. He had the same problem like his predecessors had: a sturdy-enough vertical thrust for get the craft of the ground.

He dropped his experiments temporarily and designed other fixed-wing aircraft, including military craft such as bombers, for the Tsarist Imperial Army. Much identified with the tsar, he was one of the "marked" people when the communists came to power. He fled the Russia giving up his aeronautical career and ended up in France.

In France, Sikorsky was commissioned to build a bomber for the Allies' use in World War I, but since the armistice was signed in 1918, he didn't get to finish it. The following year, he left for the US, in New York. For the next 10 years, starting in 1920, he started his own company, Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation. He developed fixed-wing airplanes. In the 1930s he finally returned to his original dream of designing a flying helicopter.

Sikorsky applied to United Aircraft to finance his projects. On September 14, 1939, Sikorsky climbed into what was truly the first single-rotor helicopter, powered by a 75 hp engine turning an automobile fan belt that turned the blades. His dream machine lifted and flew.

During World War II, it came out as "VS-300" – the first helicopter. The US Army ordered a variation calling it the "R-4." Although it wasn't used greatly in World War II, it was availed of in 1950, when Korean War started.

The helicopter became an essential air transport that could land where other aircrafts could not. Sikorsky was most particularly pleased of the helicopter's ability to save lives rather than destroy.


Image Credit:

US police department Bell 206 helicopter.  en.wikipedia.org / Public Domain

Resources:

Philbin, Tom. The 100 Greatest Inventions of all Time. New York: Citadel Press, 2003.

World's First Helicopter. ConnecticutHistory.org.  Accessed April 18, 2013.