All This Is That Technology Editor
click to enlarge - Source: Washington State Archives. General Photograph Collection. Photographer: unknown. This photo was taken sometime in 1950. It resides in Box 6 of the Washington State Digital Archives. The man in the photo is wearing a Hoppi-Coptor, a personal helicopter device developed by Seattle's Horace Pentecost. Ca. 1950. Jack note: this photo may very well be of Horace Pentecost himself.
In the mid-40's and early 50's, a Seattle company--Hoppi-copter--formed by Horace Pentecost, worked to develop a strap-on personal helicopter. The Pentecost Hoppi-Copter was a personal helicopter pack designed to be fastened to an infantryman's back and allow him to work around objective obstacles...you know, mountains, jungles, canyons, forest fires and such.
They made their first test flights in 1945, but as is true of so many flying schemes, landing was a sticky wicket. Landing shock problems proved brutal. In the research I did, there were hints that if you landed wrong, the rotors broke off to became high speed, razor-like shrapnel.
In the late 1940's, Pentecost produced a second, slightly saner version with a seat and landing gear. Two of these were sold or loaned in 1948 to the British Ministry of Supply for experimental flights. Another company bought the patents in 1954 and created a Hoppi-Copter with rotor blade-mounted pulse jets. From the few snippets of information that can be found, it sounds like these versions didn't fare much better.
The HOPPI-COPTER • rear view
According to literature from Pentecost Hoppi-copter, the Hoppi-Copter had a 45 horsepower engine: the rotor had a diameter of 18 feet, and empty, the 'copter weighed 225 pounds and could fly with a gross weight of 450 pounds. It had a maximum speed of 60 m.p.h. and a cruising speed of 45 m.p.h. It's range was about 150 miles. The facts and figures in the Time Magazine article, below, do not square with the information in the company's press releases and brochures...I can't tell which specifications are correct.
The second version of the Hoppi-copter, with seat and landing gear.
From Time Magazine, April 7th, 1947:
Ever since Icarus, and in spite of what happened to him, men have dreamed of strapping wings on themselves and taking off like the birds. Airplanes have never completely satisfied this desire. The plane itself does the flying; the man only rides and steers. Gliders are only half the ticket.
Last week the ancient dream showed headline-hitting signs of coming true. At a Philadelphia meeting of the American Helicopter Society, Horace T. Pentecost told about the "Hoppi-copter" (see cut), which he has been developing in Seattle. It is a helicopter* stripped to essentials: little more than a seat, landing wheels and two horizontal rotors revolving in opposite directions. The power source is a 35 h.p. engine with two opposed cylinders like an outboard motor. According to Mr. Pentecost, "the required blade adjustments to render typical three dimensional helicopter flight have been coordinated into a single control handle placed conveniently in front of the operator."
Total weight (not counting Mr. Pentecost): 173 Ibs. The Hoppi-copter should "retail for little more than the better modern motorcycle." Helicopter experts would be more enthusiastic if they had seen it flying, but no performance records have been made available. But the designers have incorporated one important safety feature. Icarus made the mistake of flying too near the sun, which melted the wax that held his wings together. The Hoppi-copter's announced ceiling is a modest 12,000 ft.
* The Icarus apparatus was presumably not a helicopter with revolving wing surfaces but an ornithopter, with flapping wings. [Ed's note: The flights of Icarus and Daedalus were not successful; as for the Hoppi-copter, we have found no data that any of its test flights were actually fatal].
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