WINGS #5

What role did the helicopter play in the development of aviation technology?

Unlike the airplane, it is unknown who exactly invented the helicopter because so many people came up with idea and contributed to the making of it. The idea first began with Loius Breguet’s Gyrocopter No. I. It was not very practical because it needed four men with poles to help the machine hover off the ground. The gyrocopter was the first machine to have rotatory wings and was created in 1907. Over the next couple decades, several men like Igor Sikorsky, Anton Flettner, and the Laufer brothers contributed to the invention of the helicopter. Igor Sikorsky is the man that stands out as the inventor of the helicopter from the United States’ perspective. He studied engineering at the Imperial Naval Academy located in Russia and unsuccessfully experimented with the helicopter. However, he did create an aero engineering corporation and the world’s first four-engine transport aircraft. This transport aircraft was eventually made into a four-engine bomber used in WWI. Sikorsky ended up making the helicopter by the end of 1941.

People were ecstatic about the invention of the helicopter and success of vertical flight. This meant people could start personally travelling. The helicopter could be used for both the military and for urban or regional transportation. After the development of Sikorsky’s helicopter, men like Frank Piasecki, Frank Gregory, and Arthur Young were highly interested in the idea and made their own improvements to the design of the helicopter. Later, a man named Charles H. Kaman took the piston engine from the original helicopter design, and successfully put in a turbo shaft jet engine. This led the way for the production of more powerful and light turbo shaft engines. Sales were about $2.5 billon in the U.S. in1960 for helicopter manufacturing. These helicopters were also used in WWII for medical and search-and-rescue operations. Helicopters were being developed and manufactured worldwide. The production of the helicopter “accounted for 11 percent of total airframe production” (p 476). The first thoughts of vertical flight led to great success with the invention of the helicopter.

What was the relationship between the government/military and the science and technology industry immediately following WWII?

 

Before 1940, academic science was not supported and researchers were unable to get grants because of the Great Depression. This forced scientists in America to fund their research with small grants from their universities or from small institutions. After WWII, President Roosevelt and four important American scientists worked to develop the scientific community. During WWII, scientific research brought about a revolution in weapons, aircraft, and electronic systems that were driven by the war. The government pushed researchers to produce such weaponry that would have been “scarcely imagined a decade before” (p 476). The quick improvements research made in the weaponry department modeled how research was to be run thereafter in the United States and in the world. Around 1940, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was created and the anticipation was to develop more weapons. The NDRC worked with the American universities and companies to expand on the research ideas and projects originating from the military. The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was in charge of “the creation of a new partnership between military customers, the creativity of academic science, and the productive capacity of American industry” (p 477). The government and the scientific community were working together to advance in science.

Universities all over the nation had won a total of $250 million dollars in research grants. The research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology led to the development of fire-control systems and radar technology. At Caltech, a group of engineers were some of the first to contribute to rocketry. The research at the University of California at Berkley and the University of Chicago helped out with and was very important in the Manhattan Project. It was very important that the military and science community connected during the war to develop the integral parts of the U.S. defense system.

What effect did the invention of the computer have on aviation technology?

 

The computer was originally a person who did calculations for aircraft firms because there were complex equations that could not be calculated by just anyone. This came about when developing new aircraft in the 1930s because design factors needed to be calculated to reduce the flutter, or “aerodynamically induced vibration,” in the wing or tail of the airplane (p 511). IBM punch-card tabulators were produced during WWII by engineers from Caltech, Lockheed, Consolidated, and Douglas. Some of the first computers were the Remington Rand Universal Automatic Computer and IBM 701 general-purpose computers. The government and aircraft manufacturers bought these early computers to assist in solving aeronautical problems. Wind tunnels were still used to test fluid dynamics, but the computer helped analyze the data collected from the experiments. The computers would take the data and integrate it “into accurate visual representations of fluid flow” (p 512). The use of computers made the aeronautical designing process much more efficient because new features could be added or taken out without a problem.

 

In the past, planes were designed through the creation of several blueprints. After the design was created, multiple sets of the blueprints were made to give to the manufacturers.  Not only was that process time-consuming, having the design on two-dimensional sheets of paper made it really difficult for the thousands of engineers to work together to build the complex airplane. In 1961, a software program was designed by an MIT PhD student to decrease the amount of labor and time involved in airplane manufacturing. This software was not improved until the 1980s. Not only was the software improved, but the screens were replaced by high-resolution screens. Shortly after, the computer-assisted design (CAD) program was created and implemented in aeronautical designs. All of the complex designs and calculations associated with airplane manufacturing were all done on the computer instead of on paper. Once the airplane designs went paperless because of the computer, the American universities started to get more funding for aeronautical research. The computer not only helped airplane manufacturers, but it also promoted research at the universities.