The Weird World of Folk Aviators
With his whimsical sculptures, Gregory Bryant celebrates early ideas about winged flight.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- Air & Space magazine, May 2012
Eric Long, NASM
“This 1902 helicopter proposal was a serious proposal,” says Bryant, “put out not by an individual, but by a group of people. There were mechanical drawings. What the mattress-looking thing on top is meant to be, I have no idea. The propeller-looking things...I don't know. This one does give some clues to a propulsion system; there are tanks at the base, but again, I don't know anything about it. Many of these designers were working before notions of lift and drag and thrust. And so they were working...freely."
The concept is also mentioned in one book, Helicopters Before Helicopters, by E.K. Liberatore.
“That's another thing about this subject that I find so intriguing: In retrospect, these things are laughable. But that's not fair. At the time, with everything they had available to them, these are very intelligent concepts. And it emphasizes that the progression of the history is not a straight line; it's bushy. The evolution of technology is bushy. That's Stephen J. Gould's term.”
Made of cardboard, paper, copper wire, cooking skewers, tempera paint.
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Comments (2)
Someone should try to build one of these vehicles to see if it actually flies. Some of them really do look as if they could.
Posted by Gray Stanback on June 4,2012 | 06:20 PM
I think I understand what the designers were going for in 10 of 13. (Proto-helicopter)
The mattress thing is probably a deflector to protect the pilot and props from rotor wash and anything its vortex would pull down into them (or pull the vehicle up into) One of the other propellers looks like a pusher or tractor prop, and the other one is probably for steering, since I don't imagine steering the main rotor looks to be an option.
Why I can imagine those features so clearly is either a sign of my total misunderstanding of aerodynamics or a sign of truly deranged thinking. Either way, an amazing set of designs from dreamers.
Posted by Travis Taylor on June 22,2012 | 02:49 PM