Igor sikorsky invention

Case Files: Igor Sikorsky

Introduction

Igor Sikorsky was an important part of aviation history, from the flight of Wright brothers to the exploration of space.

Who was Sikorsky, and what were some of the advances he made in the field of aviation? What physics principles are required to make a vertical take-off and landing craft—a helicopter—work?

Scientific Interest

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was born on May 25, 1889, in Kiev, Russia. The youngest of five children (three daughters and two sons) of a psychology professor, he received his early education and a liking for the work of Da Vinci and Jules Verne from his mother, who was also a trained physician.

During a 1900 vacation with his father to Germany, the young Sikorsky developed an interest in the sciences, inspired by the news of aviation firsts to build a rubber-band powered helicopter model that lifted off the ground.

Back in Russia, at the age of 14, he moved into the Petrograd Naval Academy but left in 1906 to study engineering in Paris while revolutionary unrest was stirring in Russia. Back home, following a year

It has been said that Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky achieved distinction in three separate careers, all in the field of aviation. He created the world’s first multi-engine airplane in Russia in 1913; he launched a second career in the United States and became famous for his Flying Clippers; lastly, he conceived and developed the world’s first practical helicopter. He is best known, perhaps, for this third career.

He was born in in the Kiev region of the Russia Empire, now part of independent Ukraine,  on May 25, 1889. As a boy, influenced by his mother, a medical school graduate, and his father, a doctor and a psychology professor, he showed an interest in science, particularly aviation. He built and flew model aircraft; he became acquainted at an early age with Leonardo da Vinci’s theory of the flying screw. He was 14 when Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and that event, more than any other, decided his career. He spent three years at the Naval College in St. Petersburg, and was still a student at the Mechanical Engi

Igor Sikorsky

Aviation pioneer Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was born May 25, 1889 in Kiev, which at the time was part Russia but is now the capital of Ukraine. He created the first successful helicopter in 1939, and is credited with many other outstanding accomplishments in the field of aircraft design. 

Educated as an engineer and designer, Sikorsky developed an interest in man-powered flight in his youth. He was fascinated by the work done up to that point by the Wright Brothers and by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.  After leaving the Petrograd Naval College, he traveled to Europe to study engineering and aviation in Paris. In 1907, he went home to Kiev where he completed his studies at the Mechanical Engineering College of the Polytechnical Institute, now named the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. 

He returned to Paris with plans to build a helicopter. Engineers had been attempting to build such a device for years, the first flown – unsuccessfully – in 1907 by Frenchman Paul Cornu. Others had limited success as well. But there were

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