JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This half-modern helicopter appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for February 1935--it seems t o have the fundamental of the body of the helicopter to be about right, and then adventures out with huge wings and two eight-blade rotors. It was a monster of a machine, and appeared in print just about a year before the successful introduction of the Focke Wulf FW 61, and four years before Sikorsky's true helicopter (VS-300) of 1939. The idea for a helicopter had been around for quite a while, at least from the time of Leonardo's "aerial screw', and through the coining of the word in 1861 by d'Almecourt, and was a long time in the making, though the main bits for the development of the aircraft came together in the 1930's. The "flying whiligig" here does have a squinty resemblance to the V-22 Osprey, but that would be a long time in coming.
And a close-up of the schematic:
Comments