Helicopter invented before the Aeroplane

The idea of the helicopter is very old going back to Da Vinci even. What if it was the helicopter that was the first heavier than air flying machine that was invented as opposed to fixed wing aircraft?

How would have that affected things? especially going into something like WW1.
 
you would need to delay the airplane considerable. there is no way you can pull the helicopter forward, because it needs powerful engines.
 
Helicopters work by having a propellor spin fast enough to lift the entire craft.

Airplanes work by having a smaller propellor to make the vessel move and that uses the wings to lift the entire craft.

You'd have to get rid of the whole concept of wings for lift. Since people can observe birds using their wings, this will be very hard.
 

Delta Force

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Helicopters are only a third as efficient as fixed wing internal combustion and turboprop aircraft (they have to overcome gravity and their wings/propellers are the same surface). The other issue is that a helicopter generates massive amounts of torque and without contrarotating propellers or tail rotors it will crash. Given the powerplant and aerodynamics involved it isn't surprising that helicopters and supersonic aircraft were developed around the same time. It probably would have been easier to make a supersonic aircraft before a helicopter, and even that would be early to mid-1940s. A pre-Great War helicopter is basically impossible.
 
The thinking and prototype which could lead to helicopters before aircraft actually existed, in the form of a child's toy.

Take a light disk , with radial vanes on it, pitched. mount it loosely on a platform, which itself rotates on a vertical handle when a string is pulled. When the platform spins lugs on it will spin the disk which is not otherwise fastened to the platform.

Pull the string quickly, the platform and disk spin rapidly, the disk will shoot up into the air to a surprising height.

I had one of these as a child in the 1930s, well before the invention of the helicopter, and I have seen advertisements for them in Victorian times (I think modern versions are still for sale)

If a suitably brilliant mind saw such a toy, and imagined a large scale version, you are a good way down to road to the helicopter.But, I think the unsolvable problem will be a light enough yet powerful enough power plant. I do not think that is possible.
 
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