Vintage
Rotorcraft Advertisements & Periodicals
Mankind
has been intrigued by flight for thousands of years. Folklore and mythologies
are filled with aerial adventure, but on September 19, 1783 the first living
creatures (a sheep, a duck and a rooster) ascend in a montgolfière hot-air balloon. This interest explodes when Gaspard
Félix Tournachon, known professionally as “Nadar”, becomes the first aerial
photographer, taking his camera into a balloon and revealing a previously
unseen view of the countryside. Nadar founded, with fantasy artist Gabriel de
la Landelle and inventor Gustave de Ponton d’Amécourt, the first aviation
journal L’ Aéronaute in 1864 which
increased public awareness and excitement for all things aerial, real or
imagined. That excitement continued as contemporary publications chronicled
rotorcraft innovation.
American
magazines such as Scientific American,
Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, Modern Mechanix, Bill Barnes Air Trails, Aero Digest, Air Progress, Aviation Week, Sport Aviation and in England Flight, Air Pictorial, Popular Flying, Practical Mechanics, and countless other
magazine covers/illustrations both informed and excited public imagination. And
while such publications as Flight and
Aero Digest charged companies for the
front cover, rotary flight visionaries were happy to regularly assume the
expense given the public awareness and excitement generated.