helicopter: Quick Facts

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Last updated

Oct. 23, 2026

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helicopter; vertical flight

A timeline of helicopter history with labeled black-and-white drawings, starting from the Chinese flying top in 1100, Leonardo da Vinci's helical airscrew in 1483, Launoy and Bienvenu's feather model in 1784, Sir George Cayley's steam-powered model in 1843, Paul Cornu's man-carrying helicopter in 1907, Petroczy and von Karman's tethered helicopter in 1916, de la Cierva's autogiro in 1923, Focke Achgelis Fa 61 in 1936, and Sikorsky VS-300, the first practical U.S. helicopter, in 1939.

boatswain; helicopter

Labeled diagram of a helicopter's main rotor assembly showing the rotor blade, blade grip, rotor hub, yoke, stabilizer bar with weight at the end, push-pull tube, and mast.

Diagram showing how a helicopter's movement is controlled by changing the pitch of the main rotor blades, with labeled illustrations for moving up, forward, backward, sideways, hovering, turning, and descending.

Bell Jet Ranger 206-B

police helicopter

Mi-12 helicopter

A photo of the Sikorsky R-4, the world's first production helicopter.

Know how a helicopter stays up in the air and how its rotor generates lift

Know about the various helicopter rotor blade design using advanced aerodynamic technology

The rise of air taxis in Istanbul

View Christoph Kessler of the German Space Agency working on a helicopter's rotor blades to reduce the noise

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Topics

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Key People

A photograph of Igor Sikorsky holding a model aircraft.

Igor Sikorsky

American engineer

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Dick Smith

Australian aviator and businessman

Bell Jet Ranger 206-B

Charles Wilfred Butler

American industrial designer

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Hanna Reitsch

German aviator

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Yakovlev

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Yakovlev

Soviet aircraft designer

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Paul Cornu

French engineer

NASA's Reduced Gravity Program provides the unique weightless or zero-G environment of space flight for testing and training of human and hardware reactions. NASA used the turbojet KC-135A to run these parabolic flights from 1963 to 2004.

Man-Made Birds in the Sky

Hindenburg zeppelin crashing, 1937

Transportation and Technology Firsts Quiz