18. Igor Sikorsky and the invention of the helicopter
Igor Sikorsky is credited as the inventor of the helicopter. Though the first commercially and militarily viable helicopter in the United States was his design, (the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300), he did not invent the propulsion of aircraft via the use of rotors. His first helicopter design was the H-1, which he produced in 1909. The word itself (helicopter) was coined in 1861, when a French inventor and designer built a version using a steam engine as the power source, which proved to be too heavy to be lifted off the ground. By the end of the decade, Frenchman Alphonse Penaud built rotary helicopter models and produced them as toys. Some of these were purchased by an American minister as gifts for his sons. His name was Milton Wright.
In 1908 Thomas Edison patented a helicopter design, but the aircraft never advanced beyond the modeling stage, and never flew. By then several other helicopters had, some manned and some tethered. In short, no one man or woman can be credited as the sole inventor of the helicopter, with working models or drawings of proposed rotor-powered aircraft going back to ancient China. Leonardo da Vinci proposed a design, which he called an “aerial screw”. Da Vinci built models and according to his notes flew them, but they would have been unsuitable for manned flight as the entire device rotated in the air to achieve lift.