Yet again ... this question makes the mistake of attributing a whole history of developments to the individual who built the first successful example.
The Chinese were making toys that worked on the principle of the helicopter as early as 400 BC. Leonardo da Vinci famously designed a device that could be described as an "aerial screw", in the 1480s, and his notes suggest that he built working models. The main problem with Leonardo's design, however, was that he didn't describe any method of counteracting the rotation of the rotor in order to keep the device pointing in the same direction.
The word 'helicopter' was coined in 1861 by Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt, a French inventor who demonstrated a small steam–powered model. But d'Amécourt's invention, while celebrated as an innovative use of a new metal – aluminum – never left the ground.
Many early attempts at powered flight involved the helicopter principle. In 1905, a device built by Thomas Edison flew for over 1,500 metres at a height of four metres above the ground. Two years later, a 'Gyroplane' built by the French brothers Jacques and Louis Breguet lifted its pilot about two feet into the air for one minute; but it proved to be extremely unstable and not capable of untethered flight.
Also in 1907, the French bicycle maker Paul Cornu made the first free flight in a rotary–wing aircraft. His machine rose about six feet into the air and stayed airborne for less than a minute; this was long enough to convince Cornu that his control systems were ineffective, and he soon abandoned the machine.
The history of the helicopter then gets a bit technical, but it seems that the next significant development came in 1933 when the German engineer Heinrich Focke was licensed to to produce the Cierva C.30 autogyro. (The autogyro uses air driven from below to drive the rotor, which has no motor of its own; it was invented by the Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva, in an attempt to create an aircraft that could fly safely at low speeds.) Focke developed the turbo shaft propulsion system that would eventually be used by the majority of all the world's helicopters, and designed the Focke–Wulf Fw 61, which first flew on 26 June 1936. The Fw 61 was the world's first practical transverse twin–rotor helicopter; its two rotors were set on tubular steel outriggers to the left and right of the fuselage. It broke all helicopter world records in 1937, performing to a level that had only previously been achieved by the autogyro. It is often described as the first practical, functional helicopter.
During World War II, Nazi Germany used helicopters in small numbers for observation, transport, and medical evacuation. But extensive bombing by Allied forces prevented Germany from producing helicopters in large quantities during the war.
In the United States, the Russian–born engineer Igor Sikorsky competed with W. Lawrence LePage to produce a helicopter for the US military. LePage received the patent rights to develop helicopters patterned after the Fw 61, and built the XR–1. Meanwhile, Sikorsky settled on a simpler, single rotor design: the VS–300, which was the first helicopter to use a small tail rotor to counteract the torque produced by the main rotor; this would become the standard for helicopter manufacturing across the world, and the VS–300 was the forerunner of every helicopter that we see today. Its first flight, on 14 September 1939, lasted just a few seconds; it made its first free flight on 13 May 1940. The VS–300 can be seen today in Henry Ford's Edison Museum at Dearborn, Michigan.
From the VS–300, Sikorsky developed the R–4, which became the first large–scale mass–produced helicopter. The R–4 was the only helicopter to be used by the Allies in World War II. 131 were produced, before the R–4 was replaced by other Sikorsky helicopters such as the R–5 and the R–6. In all, Sikorsky produced over 400 helicopters before the end of World War II.
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