Honors Engineering: Week Thirteen

This week I decided to continue on my talk of helicopters from last week. I thought that I would go a bit more in depth as to the history of the helicopter.

I mentioned previously that Leonardo da Vinci was the first noted inventor of the helicopter. As it turns out, that information isn't entirely accurate. The helicopter can be traced back as far as 400 BC. In China, children would play with small bamboo toys very reminiscent to da Vinci's first helicopter design(s).

After da Vinci, the helicopter went through several revisions. One well known contributor to the helicopter was Thomas Edison. He attempted putting an internal combustion engine into the machine, but unfortunately the air craft exploded. The internal combustion engine was redesigned later by Ján Bahýľ.

The first successful flight of a helicopter was conducted by Paul Cornu on 13 November 1907. The contraption lifted up 1 foot. There had been one flight previously which lifted up 2 feet, but it was so unsteady it could not be counted as "successful".