Origins of the word helicopter
Channel: Words
Date: 19/07/2018

Helicopters - at least the ones that carry people - are relatively recent things. The first production helicopter was built in 1942.

There were Chinese toys that used the same principle dating back to 400 BC, but Leonardo Da Vinci is usually credited with designing the first predecessor to the modern helicopter in the 1480s. Instead of rotors, it had a screw-shaped device on top that would spin and create lift.

He never actually built it, but he called the sketches ‘the instrument made with a screw’. Not overly creative.

The word "helicopter" was coined almost 400 years later, by Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt, a French inventor who built a steam-powered model in 1861. In his native French, it was actually hélicoptère.

What’s interesting is that its constituent parts aren’t heli and copter like you might think. 

Words is an etymology channel.

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