Da Vinci's "Notebook" Inspires Creation of World's Smallest Helicopter

You can now trade in your Buck Rogers, sci-fi jet-pack for the tiny GEN H-4 personal helicopter.  Gennai Yanagisawa, inventor of the tiny GEN H-4 personal helicopter, will be taking his lightweight 165-pound whirly-bird on a demonstration flight in Vinci, Italy on May 25.

Modeled after Leonardo's famous notebook drawings from 1493 that show an "ornithopter" with a screw-like rotor, Yanagisawa's GEN H-4 has no tail. Instead, twin counter-rotating propellers cancel out the torque that requires single-rotor helicopters to have a perpendicular tail rotor.

The GEN H-4 personal helicopter is actually available for purchase now, though Yanagisawa's company (located in the Japanese city of Matsumoto) has so far sold only six (2 in the USA) for $58,250 per bird.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Source link:

http://inventorspot.com/articles/worlds_smallest_helicopter_ready_for_first_spin_13607

Comments

[saudi]

Saudi Da Vinci's http://www.saudisolutions.org/ vision not appreciated in my life time!

[saudi]

This
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/15/ornithopterimg_assist_custom_3.jpg was made in the right place but in the wrong time.

and this http://www.saudisolutions.org/ is made in the right time but in the wrong place, my countray "Saud Arabia" unfortinatly.