Helicopters

Many people have been trying to master vertical flying for centuries, even before hot air balloons and airplanes. As stated earlier, Leonardo da Vinci designed the Aerial Screw in the 1400's. Paul Cornu invented the first piloted helicopter in 1907, but it was not successful. In 1924, Etienne Oehmichen built and flew a helicopter one kilometer. The German Focke-Wulf Fw 61 was another helicopter that flew a small distance.






Igor Sikorsky was a Russian emigrate who is considered to be the "Father" of helicopters because he invented the first successful helicopter. He began to design helicopters in 1910, and by 1940, his VS-300 was the first single rotor helicopter. He also designed the XR-4, the first U.S. military or any military helicopter that he delivered to U.S. Colonel Franklin Gregory. Igor Sikorsky had created helicopters that could travel any way, up, down, forwards, backwards, side to side, etc. In 1958, his company attached a boat hull to a helicopter so it could land and take off on water.












In 1944, Stanley Hiller Jr. built a helicopter that used all metal rotor blades that allowed the helicopter to travel faster than ever before. In 1949, he invented a helicopter called the Hiller 360 that he used to fly across the U.S.