University of Virginia Library

Helicopter Type Useless.

When efficiency of transport was demanded, the helicopter type was entirely out of court. Almost all of its advocates neglected the effect of the motion of the machine through the air on the efficiency of the vertical screws. They either assumed that the motion was so slow as not to matter, or that a patch of still air accompanied the machine in its flight. Only one form of this type had any possibility of success. In this there were two screws running on inclined axles—one on each side of the weight to be lifted. The action of such inclined screw was curious, and in a previous lecture he had

pointed out that it was almost exactly the same as that of a bird's wing. In high-speed racing craft such inclined screws were of necessity often used, but it was at a sacrifice of their efficiency. In any case the efficiency of the inclined-screw helicopter could not compare with that of an aeroplane, and that type might be dismissed from consideration so soon as efficiency became the ruling factor of the design.