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Igor sikorsky family

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It has been said that Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky achieved distinction in three separate careers, all in the field of aviation. He created the world’s first multi-engine airplane in Russia in 1913; he launched a second career in the United States and became famous for his Flying Clippers; lastly, he conceived and developed the world’s first practical helicopter. He is best known, perhaps, for this third career.

He was born in in the Kiev region of the Russia Empire, now part of independent Ukraine,  on May 25, 1889. As a boy, influenced by his mother, a medical school graduate, and his father, a doctor and a psychology professor, he showed an interest in science, particularly aviation. He built and flew model aircraft; he became acquainted at an early age with Leonardo da Vinci’s theory of the flying screw. He was 14 when Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and that event, more than any other, decided his career. He spent three years at the Naval College in St. Petersburg, and was still a student at the Mechanical Engi

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The Legacy of an Aviation Legend:

CREATING ACCESS TO ARCHIVAL MATERIALS AT
THE IGOR I. SIKORSKY HISTORICAL ARCHIVES

When you mention the name Sikorsky, most people think ‘helicopters.’ But in fact, Igor Sikorsky was an aviation pioneer in multi-engine and fixed wing aircraft as well. Born in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine) in 1889, Sikorsky had already built the largest seaplane in the world, constructed an early prototype of the helicopter, and broken many aviation records when he arrived in the US in 1919. His passport plainly stated his reason for emigrating to America: “to construct aircraft.”

 

Igor Sikorsky’s achievements include an impressive list of “firsts,” including:

  • First successful four-engine plane, (S-21 Grand, 1913)
  • Largest plane in the World produced, 880 horsepower (S-27, 1916)
  • First airplane to broadcast a radio musical program in-flight (S-29A, 1925)
  • First airplane to show a motion picture in-flight (S-29A, 1926)
  • First airplane to fly over the Andes Mountains (S-37,1929)
  • World’s largest
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    Igor Sikorsky

    Aviation pioneer Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was born May 25, 1889 in Kiev, which at the time was part Russia but is now the capital of Ukraine. He created the first successful helicopter in 1939, and is credited with many other outstanding accomplishments in the field of aircraft design. 

    Educated as an engineer and designer, Sikorsky developed an interest in man-powered flight in his youth. He was fascinated by the work done up to that point by the Wright Brothers and by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.  After leaving the Petrograd Naval College, he traveled to Europe to study engineering and aviation in Paris. In 1907, he went home to Kiev where he completed his studies at the Mechanical Engineering College of the Polytechnical Institute, now named the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. 

    He returned to Paris with plans to build a helicopter. Engineers had been attempting to build such a device for years, the first flown – unsuccessfully – in 1907 by Frenchman Paul Cornu. Others had limited success as well. But there were

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