Word: autogiro
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...Willow Grove, Pa. last week, horses shied, humans stared, as the world's first "readable'' autogiro was successfully demonstrated. With its propeller still and its three 16-ft. rotor-blades folded back like a closed fan, it chugged along the streets of this placid Philadelphia suburb at 25 m.p.h. until the driver decided to take to the air. Stepping out, he easily swung the rotor-blades into place, fixed them there with three pins. Instant later, the little machine rose into the air, buzzed off over the trees at 100 m.p.h...
Developed by Autogiro Co. of America, the new giro is the product of many extraordinary recent improvements on the bastard airplane with rotors whose crude ancestor Inventor Juan de la Cierva first made hover in the air 13 years ago. The modern giro is completely wingless, is merely a fuselage with a propeller, a tail, a direct-control rotor. The pilot sets the giro's course by tilting the rotor. In the "readable" model the engine for the first time is behind and below the pilot. This gives him perfect vision on the highway, better balance...
First readable giro is to be sold to the Bureau of Air Commerce for $12,500. It cost some $80,000 to develop. Eventually, Autogiro Co. of America expects to start mass production, bring the price down toward that of a good automobile. Firm conviction is that the combination of jump take-off and roadability is the only way to end private flying's present prime inconvenience: getting to and from a landing place...
...public to fly is to design a combination automobile and autogiro (see above). Another way is to build standard airplanes so inexpensively that the public can afford them. Because this necessitates mass production methods such as many automobile makers already have, they have considered going into the business of making "flivver planes." Last week such a flivver plane was sold. It was not made by an automobile manufacturer, but it was powered by a standard mass-produced automobile engine-the Ford...
Over Middleburg, Pa. Pennsylvania's 45-year-old Governor George Howard Earle buzzed about alone in his own autogiro to complete the 50 hours of solo flying necessary for a license. As he landed, he put on the brakes too hard, cracked up in a somersault which ruined his plane, soaked him in gasoline, bruised his hand. Pooh-poohing the injury, he hustled off to a banquet, remarked: "I am used to getting hurt. In 20 years of polo-playing I was knocked out 15 times and sometimes for long periods. I got a fractured skull, a broken back...