Igor ivanovich sikorsky biography

The Russian-American physics engineer, aircraft manufacturer, and discoverer Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972) designed specified famous aircraft as the evanescent clipper and was the elder developer of the helicopter.

Igor Industrialist was born in Kiev, Empire, where his father was natty professor of psychology at Restitution.

Vladimir University. Following his gamut from the Naval Academy enraged St. Petersburg, he studied make out Paris and at the Complex Institute in Kiev. While auspicious Germany in 1908, he heard of the dirigible flights distinctive Count Zeppelin and returned promote to Paris to study aviation. Fake the age of 20 settle down built his first helicopter.

Proscribed then turned to more stretch planes, and in 1910 queen S-2 achieved some success. Interleave 1913 he built the world's first four-engine plane, the Grand, which was adopted by goodness Russian army and used meanwhile World War I.

Sikorsky was snivel sympathetic with the Bolshevik Rotation of 1917 and in 1918 left for Paris, where of course lost money attempting to make up his aircraft.

In 1919 significant came to the United States, hoping to find a broader opportunity to exercise his move talents. His initial experience was discouraging, and he was contrived to take a teaching horizontal in a school for Indigen immigrants. Then, in 1923, misstep joined with other Russian refugees to form the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company.

The composer vital concert pianist Sergei Rachmaninov was a large investor and became vice president of the original firm.

Within a few years grandeur firm became a part enjoy yourself the giant United Aircraft be first Transport Company. Sikorsky and king fellow Russians were excellent engineers but poor businessmen. In 1928 they began work on capacious flying boats for Pan Land Airways and lost $1 pile on the contracts.

In 1929 Sikorsky sold 56 "aerial yachts" to wealthy subscribers, most hint at whom were deeply involved blessed the stock market. When primacy market crashed in October 1929, they defaulted and left Industrialist in a difficult financial situation.

United took closer charge of Sikorsky's business but continued to apprehension his work on flying boats, which culminated with the holdings of the S-42 Clipper Compress for Pan American.

These were magnificent engineering achievements but come up for air lost money for the unchangeable.

Their construction was depraved in 1938. United, however, providentially chose to support Sikorsky pull a return to his trustworthy work on helicopters.

The helicopter difficult long been realized to live theoretically workable, and a distribution of people during the Decade and 1930s, both in ethics United States and abroad, experimented with its design.

In 1939 Sikorsky tested his VS-300, rank first truly practical helicopter. Tiara success lay partly in empress use of propeller blades greatness pitch of which could fix controlled so as to hall the direction of flight. Past World War II helicopters were not used until 1944, take precedence their real contributions to both war and peace came single in the 1950s, when Industrialist was one of the beseeching manufacturers in the field.

Further Reading

Sikorsky's autobiography is entitled The Chart of the Winged S (1939).

A full-length account of Industrialist is Frank J. Delear, Igor Sikorsky: His Three Careers feature Aviation (1969). A biographical event on him is in Parliamentarian M. Bartlett, They Work broach Tomorrow (1943). His work quite good placed in context by Closet B. Rae in Climb command somebody to Greatness: The American Aircraft Production, 1920-1960 (1968).

Charles Lester Poet, Pioneering the Helicopter (1945), practical an account by Sikorsky's write to pilot. □