[00:07.58]Igor Sikorsky was born in the city of Kiev, Russia; on May 25, 1889.
[00:16.12]His mother was a doctor.
[00:15.12]His father was a professor of psychology.
[00:18.59]Igor became interested in science when he was very young.
[00:23.82]He was especially interested in the possibilities of human flight.
[00:28.94]As a ten-year-old boy, he started building toy flying machines out of paper and bamboo.
[00:36.59]One was a helicopter.
[00:38.97]Igor turned the blades and held them in place with a thin piece of rubber.
[00:45.08]When he let go of the rubber, the blades turned in the opposite direction.
[00:50.57]And the little helicopter flew around the room.
[00:54.12]Igor dreamed of building a real helicopter.
[00:59.08]But he had little hope.
[01:01.41]Later he said: "I had read with great interest the stories of French writer Jules Verne.
[01:08.38]In some of the stories,Verne described a helicopter.
[01:13.00]Many intelligent people, however, said such a machine would never fly.
[01:19.33]So I decided my dream would remain just that."
[01:23.01]Sikorsky entered the naval college in St. Petersburg.
[01:27.87]Then he studied engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev.
[01:33.25]He did not know that -- a few years earlier -- Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright had succeeded in flying.
[01:42.52]In 1908, Sikorsky traveled to Germany with his father.
[01:48.53]He saw a picture in a newspaper of Orville Wright and his airplane.
[01:54.02]"Within twenty-four hours," he said, "I decided to change my life's work.
[02:00.31]I would study aviation."
[02:03.76]The next year, Sikorsky went to Paris.
[02:07.42]At that time,Paris was the center of aviation in Europe.
[02:12.83]Sikorsky met several French pilots, including Louis Bleriot, the first person to fly across the English Channel.
[02:21.50]The pilots gave him advice about building successful airplanes.
[02:26.83]Sikorsky returned home to Kiev after learning all he could in Paris.
[02:34.01]He decided to build a helicopter, even though many experts said it was not possible.
[02:41.64]He tested his first helicopter in 1909.
[02:46.55]It weighed too much and had too little power.
[02:50.89]It could not get off the ground.
[02:53.47]He tested his second helicopter a year later.
[02:57.94]That one could lift itself off the ground.
[03:01.67]But it was not powerful enough to lift a pilot, too.
[03:05.75]After these failures, Sikorsky decided to work on airplanes; instead.
[03:11.89]His technique was unusual.
[03:15.81]First, he drew pictures of a plane.
[03:19.02]Then he built it.
[03:21.06]Finally, he trained himself to fly it.
[03:24.58]In this way, he quickly discovered any problems in the design and was able to correct them.
[03:31.82]The first plane Sikorsky designed and built was called the S2.
[03:38.04]He tested it in the summer of 1910.
[03:41.90]Justs two years later,another Sikorsky plane -- the S6 -- won the highest prize at an aviation show in Moscow.
[03:40.90]Sikorsky's success helped win him a job as head of the airplane division of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works.
[03:51.87]That is where he developed his first major new airplane design.
[03:56.60]Planes at that time had only one engine.
[04:01.10]Sometimes, a plane's propeller pulled masses of flying insects into the engine.
[04:07.13]The engine stopped, and the plane crashed.
[04:10.50]Sikorsky thought planes would be safer if they had more than one engine.
[04:16.56]So he designed a plane with four engines.
[04:20.19]He called it "The Grand."
[04:23.12]Sikorsky's plane was revolutionary.
[04:27.84]It was the first to have more than one engine.
[04:32.02]It was the first to have a closed area for the pilot and passengers.
[04:37.72]And it was the first to have a toilet.
[04:41.25]After designing "The Grand," Sikorsky designed an even bigger airplane.
[04:46.94]He called it the "Ilia Mourometz," the name of a famous Russian who lived in the Tenth century.
[04:55.22]He made a military version of this plane |