HISTORY OF THE HELICOPTER 1950s SHELL OIL COMPANY FILM 32122
Made in the
1950s by the
Shell Oil Co., this film "
History of the
Helicopter" features a look at the revolutionary machine that, at the time the film was made, had only recently come into wide use. The film features a brief look back at some of the failed attempts to build a helicopter, and discusses Breguet,
Sikorsky, Berliner and others who were convinced that rotary wings were the answer to the problem of flying. The film also shows the autogiro, a relative of the helicopter.
Modern helicopters shown include the
Bristol 171, the Airhorse by
Cierva,
Sikorsky S-51, Piasecki flying banana, and the
Fairey Gyrodyne.
The
Cierva W.11 Air
Horse was a helicopter developed by the
Cierva Autogiro Company in the
United Kingdom during the mid-1940s. The largest helicopter in the world at the time of its debut, the Air Horse was unusual for using three rotors mounted on outriggers, and driven by a single engine mounted inside the fuselage.
Louis Charles Breguet (January 2,
1880 in
Paris – May 4,
1955 in
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France) was a
French aircraft designer and builder, one of the early aviation pioneers. In
1905, with his brother
Jacques, and under the guidance of
Charles Richet, he began work on a gyroplane (the forerunner of the helicopter) with flexible wings. It achieved the first ascent of a vertical-flight aircraft with a pilot in 1907. He built his first fixed-wing aircraft, the
Breguet Type I in
1909, flying it successfully before crashing it at the
Grande Semaine d'Aviation held at
Reims. In
1911 he founded the
Société anonyme des ateliers d’aviation
Louis Breguet. In 1912, Breguet constructed his first hydroplane.
He is especially known for his development of reconnaissance aircraft used by the French in
World War I and through the
1920s. One of the pioneers in the construction of metal aircraft, the
Breguet 14 single-engined day bomber, perhaps one of the most widely used French warplanes of its time, had an airframe constructed almost entirely of aluminium structural members. As well as the French, sixteen squadrons of the
American Expeditionary Force also used it.
In
1919, he founded the
Compagnie des messageries aériennes, which evolved into
Air France.
Over the years, his aircraft set several records. A Breguet plane made the first nonstop crossing of the
South Atlantic in
1927. Another made a 4,500-mile (7,
200 km) flight across the
Atlantic Ocean in 1933, the longest nonstop
Atlantic flight up to that time.
He returned to his work on the gyroplane in 1935. Created with co-designer René Dorand, the craft, called the
Gyroplane Laboratoire, flew by a combination of blade flapping and feathering. On
December 22, 1935, it established a speed record of 67 mph (
108 km/h). It was the first to demonstrate speed as well as good control characteristics. The next year, it set an altitude record of 517 feet (
158 m).
Breguet remained an important manufacturer of aircraft during
World War II and afterwards developed commercial transports.
Breguet’s range equation, for determining aircraft range, is also named after him. He died of a heart attack in 1955 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting?
Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: "01:00:12:00 --
President Roosevelt is seen meeting with
Winston Churchill at the
Quebec Conference."
This film is part of the
Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the
USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit
http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com