Aviation Word of the Month – Helicopter

January 2022 –According to most dictionaries, heli or helio as a prefix relates to the sun, so what does that have to do with a flying machine?

I found this amusing definition of a helicopter on the Internet:

“Thousands of parts flying around in close formation with an oil leak, waiting for metal fatigue to set in!”

In fact, the mass-produced helicopter wasn't flown for the first time until 1944, 41 years after the Wright brothers, and almost at the end of WWII, although the first public demonstration of a helicopter flight was made by Dr. Igor Sikorsky four years earlier.

 

 

You might think that the word helicopter is based on the prefix heli and the vague notion of a copter, but that's not correct. In fact, the prefix being used is “helico” meaning helical and “pter” from the ancient Greek “pterus” meaning wing. So a wing describing a helical pattern!