Although fixed-wing aircraft receive all the attention by most historians, helicopter flight was the first flight envisioned by man. In fact, the ancient Chinese were playing with a hand-spun toy that rose upward when revolved rapidly and as early as the mid 1500's, the great Italian inventor Leonardo Da Vinci had used his fertile mind to make drawings of a machine that we now know as the helicopter.

His design, like many others to follow, would work theoretically but would have been impractical in full-sized form.