Helicopter means Italianness! To be precise, the one who laid the foundations for devising this medium was Leonardo Da Vinci in 1486.
Ithe greatest artist and inventor in history, designed a flying machine with revolving wings, due to the idea of the propeller; however a lot of water would still have to pass under the bridges, and I would say clouds in the sky above all!
Helicopter
Helicopter really means Italianness, even if many abroad claim paternity. The invention of the helicopter is tricolor! Regarding the world of flight, the inventions of the airplane and the helicopter, while coming from a common history, they then took very different paths. The study of two-wing flight continued in one way; while the one that involved the operation of an upper propeller has had other tortuous developments.
With some certainty, in this regard, it can be said that the first that can be classified as a real helicopter even if embryonic is from the end of the nineteenth century. The ancestor of our modern helicopters is undoubtedly the one developed by the engineer Italian taste Enrico Forlanini in 1877. All aircraft at the time were delicate, just think that at the beginning the planes were made of wood, very unstable and very fragile. Engineer Forlanini's prototype was a small aircraft with a steam engine weighing about three kilos.
Corradino D'Ascanio and the helicopter
Forlanini's helicopter managed to rise up to about 13 meters from the ground, but its structure a steam, did not allow much autonomy, nor pilot. We will have to wait until 1907 to see a bizarre aircraft with a pilot lift off the ground. That year, Paul Cornu made another prototype with pedals, which operated rotating propellers, but it was almost a toy.
This prototype had no future, in fact, it only rose about thirty centimeters from the ground, and then fell to the ground ruinously. In short, from the time of Forlanini, either it was stalled, or it was regressing significantly. The only modern father of the helicopter is Corradino D'Ascanio. The brilliant inventor went down in history for having created the wasp, which had a global success with few precedents. Born in 1891, when he was very young, attracted by aeronautical science, which was in its infancy, he dreamed of flying.
Wright Brothers
Enrolled at the prestigious Royal Higher Institute of Engineering in Turin, he graduated in 1914 and few could keep up with his futuristic ideas. Perhaps D'Ascanio was too advanced for the time. In 1906, after the brothers' flight Wright he designed and tested a kind of hang glider which he successfully flew in the Abruzzo hills. During the war Corradino D'Ascanio installed the first radio on a vehicle e contributed to the modification of dozens of biplanes.
For him, flying was really a fixed thought. Many the successes of this visionary inventor, who did not always find open minds, capable of supporting him. Evidently the times were not yet ripe. D'Ascanio's "helicopters" are also brilliant to irrigate the fields, the progenitors of today's drones, in which at the beginning no one believed.
Ugo Veniero D'Annunzio
One of the winning moves of the engineer D'Ascanio was undoubtedly to open a company together with Ugo Veniero D'Annunzio; also an engineer, son of Gabriel. Thus was born a small aircraft on which the engine of a Harley Davidson was mounted. In those years he built many structures and patented some new inventions. Finally, one day, the first helicopter took off on the Ciampino airport runway Italian in perfect working order.
It was the D'AT3, designed and built entirely by the genius of Corradino D'Ascanio, and led by Major Marinello Nelli. It was October 8, 1930, and the Italian “flying machine”, conquers the record in flight duration of 8 '45' '; the tenth record of distance with 1.079 meters in a straight line, and the thirteenth overall. The event had great prominence in the press, especially that of eighteen meters high; primates that will remain undefeated for a few years.
