Word: autogiros
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...August 1929 the crowds at the National Air Races in Cleveland tittered with amused wonderment to see a winged windmill plump itself down like a weary old hen in midfield. Since then the U. S. public has known, more or less vaguely, that the weird machine was an autogiro; that it was supposed to rise almost vertically, descend slowly and vertically; that it was undergoing some sort of experiments at the hands of its inventor, Senor Juan de la Cierva and its U. S. promoter, Harold F. Pitcairn, manufacturer of airplanes. But it was still a strange and dubious invention...
Last week the Navy bought a Pitcairn autogiro ("windmill plane") which, with its ability to descend vertically, rise almost vertically, might take off from and land upon war boats more handily than other planes...
When Inventor Edison saw and applauded the Pitcairn-Cierva autogiro at Newark last September many guessed, because it was only his second visit to any airport, that he had little knowledge of aeronautics. But Thomas Edison, like Leonardo da Vinci, attacked the problem of aerodynamics early in his inventive career. About 1880 he devised an airplane engine powered by nitroglycerin. A roll of ordinary ticker-tape, turned into guncotton, was fed between two copper rolls into the cylinder and exploded electrically. But when the engine itself exploded and injured an assistant, Edison abandoned the project. In 1910 he secured...
...Autogiro. Not to be confused with the helicopter is the Cierva Autogiro which, while capable of vertical descent, cannot take off without a short run and cannot hover indefinitely (TIME, Sept. 2). Officials of Pitcairn-Cierva Autogiro Co. of America declared last week that commercial production would be begun at Willow Grove, Pa., in August or September...