Humans have always looked at birds with envy and wished that they could fly up in the sky with them. Throughout the history of man there have been a lot of attempts at defying gravity.

The very first attempt to create a 'machine' that was capable of flying was actually a form of helicopter. This was invented in China, and it was actually a simple toy rather than anything that could carry a man. The child would twirl the toy around in their palms until enough lift is created and it can be released.

The first realistic helicopter design was created by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15th century. Unfortunately Leonardo's visions were never made into full size models due to the technology of the day not living up to the requirements. The designs created by Leonardo were way ahead of their time.

There were many other attempts at creating something that resembled a helicopter over the next centuries. However until the end of the 19th century the technology just wasn't good enough to make the dream a reality. Until then there just wasn't anything good enough to provide enough power in order to generate enough lift.

Of course things really started to take off with the advent of the internal combustion engine. The internal combustion engine allowed the helicopter a viable possibility. However even with this technology many different problems were encountered. This was caused by a lack of understanding of all the physical principles, mainly torque and balance. The very first prototypes had a tendency to flip themselves over. Others were very difficult to control, that is if they ever actually managed to get up into the air.

In 1907 a French inventor created a helicopter that used a twin-rotor system. This managed to lift off the ground for a mere couple of seconds. There wasn't much further improvement until 1924 when another French man managed to make a controllable flight which lasted over 7 minutes.

Over the next couple of years there were dozens of more successful attempts by the French, British, Dutch, Russian and Spanish to name but a few. In 1936 however the helicopter started to resemble the modern day helicopter. The German Focke-Wolfe Fw 61 was capable of flying up to 143 miles at 11,240 feet.

This started helicopter flight in earnest. Later companies like Sikorsky, Bell, and MIL would design helicopters that would become the basis for the modern day helicopter.

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