Every school kid can identify the Father of the Airplane as Orville and Wilbur Wright, with a tip of the wings to Otto Lilinthal and Samuel Langley, but the parentage of the helicopter is considerably less obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the definitions involved. The Wright brothers achieved an obvious goal: manned flight, regardless of the machine involved. Exactly what constitutes helicopter flight is substantially more muddled.

In general, helicopter flight (Big Island helicopter tours) can be defined as the ability to hover above the ground without moving forward, yet having the ability to fly forward, climb, cruise at altitude, and descend vertically to the ground. These maneuvers should be accomplished in an aircraft utilizing rotating blades spinning about a shaft to provide lift, propulsion and control forces.

While the history of helicopter flight has no Kitty Hawk in its heritage, the helicopter industry can identify a home - the Delaware Valley around Philadelphia. Three of the four major helicopter manufacturers currently operating in the United States can trace their lineage to the Delaware Valley. Thus, it is appropriate that the history of vertical flight is celebrated at the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center in West Chester, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles west of Philadelphia.

Scientists and dreamers have been fascinated with these hummingbird-like movements for centuries; Leonardo Da Vinci sketched plans for an "aerial screw" in the 1400s. In 1907, four years after the Wright brothers conquered the air at Kitty Hawk, a French bicycle maker named Paul Corn actually took off vertically for a few tethered flights at low altitude in a rotor-powered flying machine although he was unable to control the aircraft.

The pursuit of vertical flight was truly an international affair with machines being tested in France, Russia, the Netherlands, Argentina, Austria, Great Britain and the United States. In 1923, a Spanish engineer named Juan de lo Shrove, after years of unsuccessful attempts became the first aeronaut to demonstrate a successful flight in a rotating-wing aircraft. De lo Shrives Autogiro was essentially a small airplane with a monstrous rotor on top. The engine drove the propeller while the rotor was started by a team of helpers pulling on a rope wound around the rotor shaft, in the manner of starting a rotary lawn mower. De lo Shrove would fly a later refined model, the Pit cairn Shrove Autogiro (PCA-1), in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, a short flight from the American Helicopter Museum.

The man credited with designing the first practical flying machine that could be recognized as a helicopter today is Igor Sikorsky, a Russian engineer who had first tinkered with vertical-lift aircraft as an 18-year old in 1907. Sikorsky abandoned this fancy and built the world's first four-engine airplane at the age of 25. He amassed a small fortune in his native land and helped arm Russia against Germany
in World War I before fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917. He arrived in New York City almost penniless before building a reputation as an aircraft designer on fixed-wing craft with passenger amphibians and seaplanes, including the famous Pan American "Clipper." In the mid-1930s Sikorsky returned to the rotating blades of his youth and eventually developed the VS-300 helicopter. This machine had a single main lifting rotor and a small vertical rotor at the tail to offset twisting effects and to supply directional control. The VS-300 made its first successful free flight on May 13, 1940 and set a world's endurance record for helicopters in May, 1941 of one hour, thirty-two and one half minutes.

Several of these revolutionary aircraft are on display at the American Helicopter Museum, opened in 1996 with the aid of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Four of the helicopters on hand are on permanent loan from the Smithsonian, including a 1929 Pitcairn autogiro that is a sister ship of the first United States-made autogiro that aviation pioneer Harold Pitcairn flew in Bryn Athyn. Also on loan is Philadelphian Frank Piasecki's PV-2, the second helicopter to fly successfully in the United States in 1943 and the earliest surviving Bell helicopter, the Bell Model 30 Number 1A, which was designed in a nearby Paoli, Pennsylvania workshop in 1943.

The American Helicopter Museum has 38 varieties of choppers at its disposal. Featured aircraft include the only Sikorsky XR-4, the prototype for the worldÕs first mass-produced helicopter; a Bell H-13 (47D-1), seen in its familiar M*A*S*H* television series fatigues; a Hiller UH-12D built in 1950; a superbly restored Piasecki HUP-2 in its original Navy colors and a Bell 47B, the first helicopter certified to carry passengers. The star of the collection is the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey Prototype No,3, the controversial tilt-rotor vertical/short take-off aircraft championed as the future of military aircraft.

The 20,000 square-foot American Helicopter Museum & Education Center is located at 1220 American Boulevard at the Brandywine Airport in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The museum is open Wednesdays through Sundays.

Source: http://www.essortment.com/all/americanhelicop_rnwz.htm