Leonardo da Vinci's Helicopter
Leonardo bust and helicopter at Château Royal d'Amboise
Leonardo must have been a very frustrated Visionary.
His genius vision of a helicopter had to wait four hundred and fifty years for the technology it needed to make it work. Still. His spirit must have had been very satisfied on 27 May 2025 as a helicopter flew over the place in Amboise where he was laid to rest* in 1519.
You can almost feel him saying ' I knew it would work'.
In 1480, Leonardo designed The Aerial Screw demonstrating an understanding that rotating surfaces could generate lift. His idea was that if it could be rotated fast enough, it would screw itself into the air.
IBM commissioned skilled model makers to create physical models based on Leonardo's Notebooks to bring his two-dimensional drawings into a three-dimensional, tangible form. They can be seen in Château Clos Lucé where Leonardo lived and died.
His Aerial Screw was well-known in scientific and engineering circles so it's highly likely that Paul Cornu, a French bicycle maker, was well aware of it when he made the first manned free flight in a rotary-wing aircraft in 1907.
However it would take another thirty years before Igor Sikorsky, a Russian-American aviation pioneer, developed the first mass-produced helicopter, the VS-300.
Its first flight was in 1939.
As a boy, Sikorsky was fascinated by Leonardo's Aerial Screw.
In his autobiography The Story of the Winged-S he writes about Leonardo's design, how Leonardo's vision inspired him to study aerodynamics, materials sciences and engineering to explore the possibility of vertical flight.
Model of Leonardo’s Arial Screw, Château Clos Lucé
Neither Visionary could have foreseen that one day their Screw Into The Air Helicopter would be used to save a wall collapsing in Leonardo's much loved Château where he staged spectacles to entertain the Royal Court and where he asked to be buried.
*The ancient church of Our Lady of Amboise and Saint Florentin was demolished during the French Revolution. Leonardo's remains were re-interred in Saint Hubert's Chapel, in The Royal Château of Amboise.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Photography by Mark Playle.
Leonardo da Vinci
The Amboise Connection
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