SIKORSKY'S FIRST SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT
[This article appeared in the September 1940 issue of Popular Science Monthly.]

Helicopter Flown Successfully

What is claimed to be the first successfully controlled vertical flight in a heavier-than-air machine was made recently by Ivor Sikorsky, prominent aeronautical engineer, at Bridgeport, Conn., in his new helicopter. Powered by a seventy-horsepower engine and equipped with variable-pitch rotor blades, the craft moved straight up from the ground for thirty feet, circled the field, and then settled vertically to the ground. Small rotor blades mounted on the bare fuselage of the craft act as elevators and rudder. Sikorsky is shown at the controls of the helicopter in the photographs.


(Click on the photo for a larger version.)

 


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Last updated February 12, 2005