NEW FLYING MACHINE

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 114, 11 November 1919, Page 7

NEW FLYING MACHINE

THE HELICOPTER PRINCIPLE

PATENTS BOUGHT BY PRANCE,

(OKItID MESS ASSOCIATION.—COMBISHT.)

(ADSTRAMAN-NBW KiMND CABU ASSOCIATION.!

(Received November. 11, 11.30 a.m.)

LONDON, Bth November

The Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail states that the French Government has '.bought the patents of a wingless twin-engined flying machine. The desjngriers, Professor Lecoin and an engneer named Danblanc, claim that the machine solves the difficulties of vertical ascension, slow flight, and motionlessness in the air. It is provided with twin four-bladed propellers, the blades of which are built of material resembling that of the wings of an ordinary aeroplane, but much stronger. Each blade is capable of having its angle changed, and this regulates the evolutions and speed of the machine. If the engines fail, thai manipulation of the propeller will enable it to "volplane" to the earth.*

[Many inventors have laboured with the idea of a fiying machine constructed on the principle indicated in this message. Such machines are "helicopters" (or screw-winged), and the principle is simply to use a propeller or propellers to lift the machine vertically, instead of, as in the aeroplane, driving it horizontally, so that inclined wings raise the weight. Mechanical difflculties alone have prevented the practical development of the idea. Such a machine can theoretically rise vertically, remain stationary, or travel at a,ny speed up to the maximum, of which the power-plant fitted is capable. One of the most serious defects of the scheme is that stoppage of the engines means a direct and disastrous descent, unless,, as is indicated respecting the new French invention, the screwwings can be converted into emergency planes.]