HELICOPTERS MAY MAKE AIRPLANES OBSOLETE
The next big forward step in aviation will be the helicopter. Run to your Greek dictionary and look it up. "Helicon" means spiral or screw and "pteron" means wing. Get it? Orville Wright invented the word and predicted years ago that someone would invent the machine. An airplane—though it wouldn't be a "plane" at all and we'd have to call it a "flying machine" or something like that—which was able to rise into the air by means of "screw-wings" or devices like electric fans placed horizontally, could ascend from a space no bigger than the spread of its wings, and descend, if the machinery worked properly, in a similar space. Instead of a big landing field away out in the country, such machines could start out from a city roof or a suburban back yard. Both the British and the French governments, which pay much more attention to aviation than does ours, have offered prizes for helicopters capable of doing certain "stunts." The British specifications call for a machine that will rise 2,000 feet, carrying a pilot and fuel for an hour's flight; hover stationary in the air for half an hour, and fly horizontally at 60 miles an hour. Louis Brennan, the monorail inventor, claims to have built a machine covering these requirements. Pescara, an Argentine inventor, made a helicopter that would rise six feet carrying a passenger, and sold it to the French government.
