Étienne Edmond Œhmichen (; 15 October 1884, in Châlons-sur-Marne

Châlons-en-Champagne Châlons-en-Champagne () is a city in the Grand Est region of France. It is the capital of the department of Marne, despite being only a quarter the size of the city of Reims. Formerly called Châlons-sur-Marne, the city was officially renam ...

– 10 July 1955, in Paris) was a French

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

designer.

Biography

Œhmichen studied at

École Centrale Paris École Centrale Paris (ECP; also known as École Centrale or Centrale) was a French grande école in engineering and science. It was also known by its official name ''École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures''. In 2015, École Centrale Paris mer ...

. He patented the first electric

stroboscope A stroboscope, also known as a strobe, is an instrument used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving, or stationary. It consists of either a rotating disk with slots or holes or a lamp such as a flashtube which produces br ...

in 1917, building at the same time a camera capable of shooting 1,000 frames per second. Oemichen2

His first successful flight with a helicopter took place on 18 February 1921. On 11 November 1922, he first flew 'Oehmichen No.2', an improved helicopter featuring small vertically mounted rotors which rotated in the opposite direction from the large lifting rotors, probably creating the first reliable flying helicopter capable of carrying a person. This work later led to the development of the

tail rotor The tail rotor is a smaller rotor mounted vertically or near-vertically at the tail of a traditional single-rotor helicopter, where it rotates to generate a propeller-like horizontal thrust in the same direction as the main rotor's rotation. The ...

. On 14 April 1924, he broke the existing record for helicopter flight with a flight of 360 mFAI Record ID #13093 - Straight distance. Class E former G (Helicopters), piston
" ''

Fédération Aéronautique Internationale The (; FAI; en, World Air Sports Federation) is the world governing body for air sports, and also stewards definitions regarding human spaceflight. It was founded on 14 October 1905, and is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. It maintai ...

(FAI).'' Retrieved: 21 September 2014. and 525 mFAI Record ID #13095 - Straight distance. Class E former G (Helicopters), piston
''

(FAI).'' Retrieved: 21 September 2014. a few days later, just before being surpassed by

Raúl Pateras Pescara Raúl Pateras Pescara de Castelluccio (1890 – 1966), marquis of Pateras-Pescara, was an engineer, lawyer and inventor from Argentina who specialized in automobiles, helicopters and free-piston engines. Pescara is credited for being one of th ...

. On 4 May 1924, he won a prize of 90,000 French Francs for the first successful closed circuit helicopter flight following a triangular trajectory with a length of approximately one km, a flight which took approximately 7 minutes and 40 seconds. The same year, he made a flight with two passengers. In 1931, Œhmichen invented and tested a type of blimp he called the "Hélicostat", controlled by four movable propellers, which could hover, take off, and land without ground crew. Œhmichen was also a biologist and studied insect wing function, especially in dragonflies. He worked at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...

in Paris for 30 years until his retirement.

Publications

His writing and photographs contained observations of the bird and insect flight. * In 1920, ''Nos maîtres les oiseaux, étude sur le vol animal et la récupération de l'énergie dans les fluides'', Dunod. (''Our masters, the birds, a study on animal flight and recovering energy in fluids'') * In 1938, Il publie chez Hermann et Cie, Éditeur des Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles (584), '' Mécanismes naturels et technique humaine'', Exposés publiés sous sa direction "La sécurité aérienne animaux et machines" La fin du livre est illustrée de l'appareil n°1. * Archive is available at

.Œhmichen, Étienne (1884-1955)
- Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oehmichen, Etienne 20th-century French inventors 1884 births 1955 deaths