Igor Sikorsky: Aircraft and Helicopter Designer

(part 1)

Now, the VOA Special English program, EXPLORATIONS. Today Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember tell about Igor Sikorsky. He was a leader in designing and building new kinds of aircraft.

***VOICE ONE:

Igor Sikorsky was born in the city of Kiev, Russia, on May 25 (twenty-fifth), 1889 (eighteen eighty-nine). His mother was a doctor. His father was a professor of psychology.

Igor became interested in science when he was very young. He was especially interested in the possibilities of human flight. As a ten-year-old boy, he started building toy flying machines out of paper and bamboo.

One was a helicopter. Igor turned the blades and held them in place with a thin piece of rubber. When he let go of the rubber, the blades turned in the opposite direction. And the little helicopter flew around the room.

Voice two:

Igor dreamed of building a real helicopter. But he had little hope. Later he said: "I had read with great interest the stories of French writer Jules Verne. In some of the stories, Verne described a helicopter. Many intelligent people, however, said such a machine would never fly. So I decided my dream would remain just that."

Sikorsky entered the naval college in St. Petersburg. Then he studied engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev. He did not know that, a few years earlier, Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright had succeeded in flying.

Voice one:

In 1908 (nineteen-oh-eight), Sikorsky traveled to Germany with his father. He saw a picture in a newspaper of Orville Wright and his airplane. "Within twenty-four hours," he said, "I decided to change my life's work. I would study aviation."

The next year, Sikorsky went to Paris. At that time, Paris was the center of aviation in Europe. Sikorsky met several French pilots, including Louis Bleriot, the first person to fly across the English Channel. The pilots gave him advice about building successful airplanes.

***VOICE TWO:

Sikorsky returned home to Kiev after learning all he could in Paris. He decided to build a helicopter, even though many experts said it was not possible.

He tested his first helicopter in 1909 (nineteen-oh-nine). It weighed too much and had too little power. It could not get off the ground. He tested his second helicopter a year later. That one could lift itself off the ground. But it was not powerful enough to lift a pilot, too. After these failures, Sikorsky decided to work on airplanes, instead.

Voice one:

His technique was unusual. First, he drew pictures of a plane. Then he built it. Finally, he trained himself to fly it. In this way, he quickly discovered any problems in the design and was able to correct them.

The first plane Sikorsky designed and built was called the S-2. He tested it in the summer of 1910 (Nineteen-Ten). Just two years later, another Sikorsky plane the S-6 won the highest prize at an aviation show in Moscow.