This week for my honors project, I have started doing some research on some of the "Founders of Flight". I started with da Vinci. I have done research on da Vinci previously for my senior project last semester, but I feel that he is a good starting off point since he really was one of the first few people to really experiment with flying machines.
Da Vinci created multiple flying machines, but his two most famous machines were called the "Ornithopter" which was a human powered aircraft that flapped its wings like a bird. Da Vinci created this design after dissecting several doves and pigeons. His second most famous design was the "helicopter". Da Vinci was inspired to create the helicopter after looking at a screw for several hours. He realized that if the air is able to spiral around the screw consistently, then if the screw is spinning, it should be able to hover mid-air. He decided to design the helicopter off of this design, which eventually turned into the helicopter we have today.
