Etienne Oehmichen

Étienne Oehmichen (* October 15, 1884 in Châlons-sur-Marne Châlons-en-Champagne

Châlons-en-Champagne

Châlons-en-Champagne is a city in France. It is the capital of both the department of Marne and the region of Champagne-Ardenne, despite being only a quarter the size of the city of Rheims....

; † July 10, 1955 in Paris) was a French engineer and helicopter designer.

Life

He studied at École Centrale Paris. On 18 February 1921, he completed his first successful flight with a helicopter and brought on 11 November 1922 he first went Oehmichen No.2 in the air, probably the first reliable flying whiz, which could carry a man. Here he continued to small vertically mounted rotors that the large horizontal rotors are counter and reached the stabilization of the machine as a whole. This idea later led to the development of the tail rotor

Tail rotor

The tail rotor, or anti-torque rotor, is a smaller rotor mounted so that it rotates vertically or near-vertically at the end of the tail of a traditional single-rotor helicopter. The tail rotor's position and distance from the center of gravity allow it to develop thrust in the same direction as...

. On 14 April 1923, he had the record with a flight of about 358 m on. A year later, on 4 May 1924 he succeeded the first time with a helicopter following a circular trajectory with a length of about one km after about 7 minutes and 40 seconds in the same place to land. For this he received the advertised prize money of 10,000 French Francs.

Oehmichen was also a biologist and dealt with the principle function of insect wings, especially dragonflies. It was the end of the 30-years as a professor of biology at the Collège de France in Paris called, where he worked until his retirement taught.
His writing and photographs contained observations of the bird and insect flight, today's scientists serve biomechanics as a basis for further research in the construction of flexible rotor blades.

External links

• Oehmichen helicopter in Flight magazine 1921
• Oehmichen and his helicopter mentioned in Flight 1924