Word: autogiros
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...they need lots of room to land or take off. Juan de la Cierva resolved to remove these flaws, began toying with helicopters (planes with the propeller faced vertically). He got the idea of disconnecting the helicopter propeller from the engine, enlarging it. Result in 1920 was the first autogiro, which did not fly. Neither did the second or third model. Then, according to legend, Music Lover de la Cierva and his wife were at an operatic version of Don Quixote when he noticed that the flexible blades of the stage windmill flapped slightly as they turned. He made...
...first ridiculed as "the whirling dervish of the air," the autogiro gradually improved during a long tour of Europe punctuated by frequent crashes, which proved the giro's safety because Pilot de la Cierva was never hurt. In 1928, when he flew the English Channel, he won recognition. From then on, England was autogiro headquarters. English capital financed the Cierva Autogiro Co. Inventor de la Cierva, Royalist son of King Alfonso's Minister of War, was glad to stay away from Spain after King Alfonso was dethroned. Except for an occasional spree with his four children, he devoted...
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...