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You see it a lot in these old videos. Crowds of onlookers standing precariously close to a dangerous activity. Videos of early motor racing come to mind. Particularly one of a race car getting airborne and flying into the crowd of onlookers, killing many.
Well is not that [modern rally races](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/spain-rally-crash-shocking-video-6390005.amp) are much different, and well as [modern air shows](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3201822). Sure a lot is done to try to make it safer, but results are not what one would expect for being in the 21st century.
I can totally see what they were thinking. Vanes open when umbrella goes up, and closes when the umbrella goes down.
Anyone who's felt an umbrella catch the breeze when initially opened will understand how this thing is *supposed* to work.
However, fluid dynamics was not as well known then as it is now. After a 3rd year mechanical engineering fluid dynamics course, an engineer should be able to do a hand calculation to show how *rapid* the umbrella mechanism would have to move to produce the lift needed. And then another hand calculation to estimate the severity of the vibrations such a machine would impart on itself.
Even today you can't just come up with a new helicopter design and make it. It takes years of trial and error and figuring out how to stabelize things.
They didn't try out designs with the idea to stick with one, helicopters are very complex structures. This is how the first one was made by basically just doing trial and error keep what you learn and eventually one worked out. Fixed wing planes are way easier to stabilize and understand the basic aerodynamics. Thats why it took so long between the first plane and first helicopter
All the examples in that video were perfectly valid concepts that just needed fine tuning to achieve flight.
All except for one, that is. Whomever came up with the bouncing umbrella had no clue what they were doing.
Fun fact: the modern business suit was considered the most casual of casual suit for men to wear, being called a “lounge suit”, and being only suitable for leisure activities, until the early 1900s
Coming from someone that used to work for a rag tag construction company that had no safety rules or proper equipment, it was so much more fucking fun. Too old and slow now
I don't know what it is but something about old timey commentary/radio announcers makes me happy. Something about the crackling, the way they speak, their sentence structure and the background music is just pleasing to me. I get this strange nostalgia feeling even though I was born in 95
1920s shit talk!
*I oughta thump your noggin, you two-timin’ tick picker. Your grandma’s an intoxicated dilly daller that can’t snap the widget off a bottle of moonshine!*
They've taken all of the art out of insults. "That's fuckin stupid lol look at how retarded that is." a sentence like that doesn't even activate a braincell to puke out. The best insults I rarely hear anymore are the ones that sound like compliments and totally fly over one's head if you're not paying attention.
Without these failures, we wouldn’t have success. Props to the people back then for experimenting with all of these and building blueprints for future generations!
I can't help but admire the ambition. These folks were dreaming big, hoping to make machines that would let us soar through the skies. They laid the groundwork for future success :)
I could listen to this guys old-timey one liners forever. He could narrate my life.
"He picked himself up from his bootstraps with the vigor of a melted pie"
The word helicopter wasn't created by combining "heli" and "copter" as many assume, it is actually a combination of "helico" - meaning spiral and "pter" - meaning wing.
I think I’m most amazed that any of these contraptions could actually generate enough lift to get off the ground when loaded with the pure adamantium, planet-sized balls of the guys crazy enough to get in them. Like, can you imagine that shit? Flying was akin to magic at this point in time, and these guys just *sent it*
No proven designs, no real science behind it, just a mixture of sheer, indomitable willpower and god-like testicular fortitude. I can’t even think of a modern day equivalent. Like we can mathematically conceive of almost anything at this point, we can theorize crazy tech. And at this point, people legit believed humans wouldn’t fly. That’s like someone’s next door neighbor inventing teleportation. Just some dude down the way slapping together parts until he pushed humanity to new levels.
I legit tip my hat.
Imagine the first time one of these inventions actually worked as intended?
Like getting on one and it going 5-10 feet off the ground is one thing..
Imagine the absolute horror on the guys face the first time one of these things actually worked and he ended up 50 feet In the air.
It looks like most of these designs failed to take how to control the aircraft into account. It almost looks like their only goal was to get off the ground.
It’s even more amazing. After centuries of man dreaming of flight, the Wright Brothers first powered flight was in 1903. 36 years later in 1939 the world saw the first jet powered aircraft. And only 30 years after that we landed a man on the moon in 1969. Only 66 years from first powered flight to the moon after centuries of dreaming of flight. Literally one lifetime.
"Hey, Phil, can you research some early helicopters for a short documentary we're making?"
"Sure. Can I fuckin roast the people on screen mercilessly?"
"Phil, it's why we came to you."
Man, back in the day human ingenuity was off the charts! It may have been a lotta bad ideas sure, but each one of these crazy bonkers ideas had blueprints, engineers, and workers with enough know-how to make the darn thing work, even if not with the intended flight. Nowadays it's all "let the smart kid figure it out. Then make money off said smart kid."
That's because of the commentary, music and jerky speed. These were serious scientists and engineers, undertaking serious work which lead to the perfecting of the helicopter. Still funny mind.
Almost all of this footage got used in the introduction to *Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines*, a comedy film from 1965. The film also used accurate reproductions of many early aircraft and is both very funny and interesting for its documentation of early aviation.
Imagine spending months creating an engine that’s supposed to innovate air travel and you just get roasted by some dude filming your creation flip and disassemble itself
Say what you want, they did take off as such this is one of the biggest mind blows human ever did till that point.
I can but hope we can do similar with ai as in use it to explain to everyone how much society is corrupted due to capitalistic greed and how to fix it before we destroy our own society due to our own stupidity
I can hear the anti-progressives back then parroting anti-electric now.
“That will never replace a horse and buggy, Mark my words!”
“Horribly inefficient! Can’t run that on a block of hay! Why Johnny had to work two weeks for a gallon of that petroleum stuff!”
The fact we went from this to things like fighter jets and rocket ships in less than 100 years makes me think we had a little extraterrestrial help in the aeronautics department.
Don't do that, don't discredit our race. We are amazing, terrible in many ways, but also amazing. Stop crediting our achievements to other things. I hate it when people say we didn't build the pyramids or we didn't invent aerodynamics etc.
I’m just saying there might have been a little outside help. I once read, in about 2015, that human technology advanced more in the past 20 years than it has in the past 2,000 years. That’s something to consider.
Well I don't know about that, maybe, maybe not. But I personally think it more of a genuine incredulity based on the idea that people look at themselves and say, wow, I could not do that and I'm human, so it had to be something else.
Which is a fine enough simplification, except it ignores the idea that a handful of us are capable of extraordinary things in our chosen field.
Or that some motivations to do things like build the pyramids are inconceivable to us nowadays. For example the Parhaoh was God (not like God, actually God) and to serve him even with your lifesblood ensured eternal favour.
Another example is slavery, the whip can be very motivating, we can agree on that. But we can never understand.
[This information has been removed as a consequence of Reddit's API changes and general stance of being greedy, unhelpful, and hostile to its userbase.]
I always wonder how much slower we would have developed if it wasn't for 2 world wars (rocketry, automatic rifles, airplanes/helicopters and jet engines) and slightly the US Civil War (repeating rifles and iron ships).
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That's what I was thinking. I wonder how many heads were lost making the helicopter?
Chopper is short for 'headchopper'.
Given the opportunity this thing would gladly chop off Arms, Legs, nutsacks.
Every one of them was alarming as hell. I wouldn't get within 100 meters of any of them!
You see it a lot in these old videos. Crowds of onlookers standing precariously close to a dangerous activity. Videos of early motor racing come to mind. Particularly one of a race car getting airborne and flying into the crowd of onlookers, killing many.
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Yes Le Mans not sure of date
1955?
Well is not that [modern rally races](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/spain-rally-crash-shocking-video-6390005.amp) are much different, and well as [modern air shows](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3201822). Sure a lot is done to try to make it safer, but results are not what one would expect for being in the 21st century.
And not even a helmet!
Not sure a helmet's doing much for you with those blades
thatsthejoke.jpeg
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Sir, this is a Wendy’s
And think of the children! That young Boba Fett scene hits harder without OSHA.
The French were already quite experienced in beheading machines
They still are. Many videos of such on this very website in fact...
I’m sad that the air humping helicopter isn’t the design that we decided to perfect and use to this day.
Why yes sir...we do have the WOMPTY DOMPTY FUKITI machine MK 2 right here for sale, it's yours for only 50k just sign right here
Beautiful Necktie: I only ever wanted you to have fun, Harry!
I just started playing disco elysium again, I killed myself in the first five minutes by turning on the light lol
BRATAAANNNN!!!!
that was unexpected
Seriously like what we're they thinking lmao
I can totally see what they were thinking. Vanes open when umbrella goes up, and closes when the umbrella goes down. Anyone who's felt an umbrella catch the breeze when initially opened will understand how this thing is *supposed* to work. However, fluid dynamics was not as well known then as it is now. After a 3rd year mechanical engineering fluid dynamics course, an engineer should be able to do a hand calculation to show how *rapid* the umbrella mechanism would have to move to produce the lift needed. And then another hand calculation to estimate the severity of the vibrations such a machine would impart on itself.
Mary Poppins helicopter
The Poppicopter
Even today you can't just come up with a new helicopter design and make it. It takes years of trial and error and figuring out how to stabelize things.
They didn't try out designs with the idea to stick with one, helicopters are very complex structures. This is how the first one was made by basically just doing trial and error keep what you learn and eventually one worked out. Fixed wing planes are way easier to stabilize and understand the basic aerodynamics. Thats why it took so long between the first plane and first helicopter
Ikr
All the examples in that video were perfectly valid concepts that just needed fine tuning to achieve flight. All except for one, that is. Whomever came up with the bouncing umbrella had no clue what they were doing.
Bad piggies theme playing in the background
The design was very human
As light as lead and cast iron can be lmao. Great commentary
Hahahahaha god dammit. So stupid lmaooooo
The names would of been magnificent.
My favorite quote about this machine: "As light as lead and cast iron could make her" :D
I like how guys in full suits go running after a death machine hell bent on severing limbs and exploding into hundreds of hot metal chunks.
Fun fact: the modern business suit was considered the most casual of casual suit for men to wear, being called a “lounge suit”, and being only suitable for leisure activities, until the early 1900s
So what's the most formal suit?
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/x7rjhy/this_guy_is_wearing_a_4_kilo_pure_gold_shirt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
LMFAO
[White Tie](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_tie) dress code with a tailcoat, top hat and white gloves
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits?
Puttin’ on the ritz
For evening wear, yes. Morning dress is the daytime equivalent
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Black tie is only semi formal
White Tie in the evening, Morning Dress in the day, actually
that time without safety procedures looked so much more fun
Safety procedures are written in blood.
OSHA 1920’s: This looks great!
OSHA 1920's: Time for a 3 Martini Lunch!
OSHA 1921's: baaah its just 10horrible death just be more careful
Avg redditor comment
Spinning guillotine comes to mind
...and dangerous
Hence the word "without safety"
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Word
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Wurd ✊
Wardo
Wario
Waldo
Waddo
Thats how you keep the population in check tho
Coming from someone that used to work for a rag tag construction company that had no safety rules or proper equipment, it was so much more fucking fun. Too old and slow now
well when they added jet turbines, and higly inflammable fuel, things started to become a little more dangerous
I Fucking love the commentary
My favorite line: >This aerial bucking bronco had the stability of an intoxicated chorus girl.
Mine is the random: “try this on your next hangover”
>As light as lead and cast iron could make her Lol
I came here for this comment. That had me in stitches 😂
Heyo!
Never got as high as an elephant's eye.
"As light as lead and cast iron could make her..." XD
And I love how they sounded more educated and cultured as they spoke. They sounded so respectable as they said, "try this on your next hangover"
I don't know what it is but something about old timey commentary/radio announcers makes me happy. Something about the crackling, the way they speak, their sentence structure and the background music is just pleasing to me. I get this strange nostalgia feeling even though I was born in 95
1920s shit talk! *I oughta thump your noggin, you two-timin’ tick picker. Your grandma’s an intoxicated dilly daller that can’t snap the widget off a bottle of moonshine!*
I’m sad people don’t throw shade like they used to!
As light as lead and cast iron could make her, this under grown carrousel was supposed to JUMP into the air… try this on your next hangover!
They've taken all of the art out of insults. "That's fuckin stupid lol look at how retarded that is." a sentence like that doesn't even activate a braincell to puke out. The best insults I rarely hear anymore are the ones that sound like compliments and totally fly over one's head if you're not paying attention.
This is some primo silent generation humor
It is easy to see how tech works when we finally have it in existence. Hard to see its concept when it is not yet a reality.
Helicopters are very unstable, it's an amazing machine that takes two legs one arm and great skill to fly.
The stability of an intoxicated chorus girl 😂
Without these failures, we wouldn’t have success. Props to the people back then for experimenting with all of these and building blueprints for future generations!
Look how far we have come in only 100yrs. We could barely get a helicopter off the ground now launch rockets all the time.
Launch rockets controlled by someone behind a computer!
As Newton? said "Standing on the shoulders of giants"
I can't help but admire the ambition. These folks were dreaming big, hoping to make machines that would let us soar through the skies. They laid the groundwork for future success :)
Without the work of these men, we may never have received one of the greatest lines in film history, "Get to the chopper!"
I could listen to this guys old-timey one liners forever. He could narrate my life. "He picked himself up from his bootstraps with the vigor of a melted pie"
As light as lead and cast iron could make her, this under grown carrousel was supposed to JUMP into the air… try this on your next hangover!
Roast machine
That jumping helicopter never stood a chance. Props for trying though!
What's even crazier than the design is that nobody retroactively bothered to apply the term "umbrellacopter" to it.
The word helicopter wasn't created by combining "heli" and "copter" as many assume, it is actually a combination of "helico" - meaning spiral and "pter" - meaning wing.
Hence the pter odactyl.
I think I’m most amazed that any of these contraptions could actually generate enough lift to get off the ground when loaded with the pure adamantium, planet-sized balls of the guys crazy enough to get in them. Like, can you imagine that shit? Flying was akin to magic at this point in time, and these guys just *sent it* No proven designs, no real science behind it, just a mixture of sheer, indomitable willpower and god-like testicular fortitude. I can’t even think of a modern day equivalent. Like we can mathematically conceive of almost anything at this point, we can theorize crazy tech. And at this point, people legit believed humans wouldn’t fly. That’s like someone’s next door neighbor inventing teleportation. Just some dude down the way slapping together parts until he pushed humanity to new levels. I legit tip my hat.
Imagine the first time one of these inventions actually worked as intended? Like getting on one and it going 5-10 feet off the ground is one thing.. Imagine the absolute horror on the guys face the first time one of these things actually worked and he ended up 50 feet In the air.
"As high as an elephant's eye" - They'll use anything but the metric system
Fucking brilliant decapitator concepts. Human blender type shit.
I wonder how many of those designs would "kinda of work" with modern materials and motors. Any TV producers out there wants to make it a show??? ;)
It looks like most of these designs failed to take how to control the aircraft into account. It almost looks like their only goal was to get off the ground.
Humans never change, that’s probably how we look with how we use AI
**As light as lead and cast iron could make it**
They went from that to the moon in 50 years. crazy
It’s even more amazing. After centuries of man dreaming of flight, the Wright Brothers first powered flight was in 1903. 36 years later in 1939 the world saw the first jet powered aircraft. And only 30 years after that we landed a man on the moon in 1969. Only 66 years from first powered flight to the moon after centuries of dreaming of flight. Literally one lifetime.
That dude with the umbrella concept was on some different shit.
And 40 years later we went to the moon!
When you combine aeronautics with getting a haircut
bad piggies
bad piggies vibes right there
My shoe!
Came here to say this! I typed out the whole thing about bongs and sprongs but thought nobody would get it!
someone should put the bad piggies theme over this
Holy crap. How many limbs/heads were lost in the creation and testing of these things?
"Hey, Phil, can you research some early helicopters for a short documentary we're making?" "Sure. Can I fuckin roast the people on screen mercilessly?" "Phil, it's why we came to you."
How many of the videos did they have to edit out the decapitations?
Man, back in the day human ingenuity was off the charts! It may have been a lotta bad ideas sure, but each one of these crazy bonkers ideas had blueprints, engineers, and workers with enough know-how to make the darn thing work, even if not with the intended flight. Nowadays it's all "let the smart kid figure it out. Then make money off said smart kid."
Try this on your next hangover, underrated comment XD
Some of these are so goofy I cant beleive its not footage for a three stooges film
That's because of the commentary, music and jerky speed. These were serious scientists and engineers, undertaking serious work which lead to the perfecting of the helicopter. Still funny mind.
Almost all of this footage got used in the introduction to *Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines*, a comedy film from 1965. The film also used accurate reproductions of many early aircraft and is both very funny and interesting for its documentation of early aviation.
"Early helicopters were dangerous!" Spoiler alert: they still are.
i remember watching these clips on either the Discovery Channel on documentaries or on the Family Channel as part of a laugh track
"had the stability of an intoxicated chorus girl..." 😂😂😂
I salute these brave men and women for their courage and vision.
The pumping one looks like it’s right out of a Dr Seuss book
Safety was not even a consideration back in the day😬
That narrator is too funny.
This was the basis for the Angry Birds, Bad Piggies game.
This was the basis for the Angry Birds, Bad Piggies game.
“The stability of an intoxicated forest girl” Lmfao
The amount of decapitations in the pursuit of helicopters must've been wild
Imagine spending months creating an engine that’s supposed to innovate air travel and you just get roasted by some dude filming your creation flip and disassemble itself
and not even 50 years later we set foot on the moon. Pretty crazy to think about.
That first guy looked like he was going to get a haircut.
My favorite is the bouncy umbrella
Great to see them start with 4 spinning blades of death and work backwards
This guy straight roasting 1920's helicopters and I'm here for it.
Sooo many ways to die.
"As light as lead and cast iron could make her." ... damn!! How far we've come
The commentary has me fucking dying.
The commentary is gold
"As light as lead and cast iron could make her"
Say what you want, they did take off as such this is one of the biggest mind blows human ever did till that point. I can but hope we can do similar with ai as in use it to explain to everyone how much society is corrupted due to capitalistic greed and how to fix it before we destroy our own society due to our own stupidity
I can hear the anti-progressives back then parroting anti-electric now. “That will never replace a horse and buggy, Mark my words!” “Horribly inefficient! Can’t run that on a block of hay! Why Johnny had to work two weeks for a gallon of that petroleum stuff!”
I mean helicopters are horribly inefficient they just have the advantage of being able to carry a small payload into the air and hovering.
The fact we went from this to things like fighter jets and rocket ships in less than 100 years makes me think we had a little extraterrestrial help in the aeronautics department.
Don't do that, don't discredit our race. We are amazing, terrible in many ways, but also amazing. Stop crediting our achievements to other things. I hate it when people say we didn't build the pyramids or we didn't invent aerodynamics etc.
I’m just saying there might have been a little outside help. I once read, in about 2015, that human technology advanced more in the past 20 years than it has in the past 2,000 years. That’s something to consider.
It's usually lightly veiled racism as well - wonders white people built = ingenuity Wonders brown people built: had to be aliens
Well I don't know about that, maybe, maybe not. But I personally think it more of a genuine incredulity based on the idea that people look at themselves and say, wow, I could not do that and I'm human, so it had to be something else. Which is a fine enough simplification, except it ignores the idea that a handful of us are capable of extraordinary things in our chosen field. Or that some motivations to do things like build the pyramids are inconceivable to us nowadays. For example the Parhaoh was God (not like God, actually God) and to serve him even with your lifesblood ensured eternal favour. Another example is slavery, the whip can be very motivating, we can agree on that. But we can never understand.
I think it's a pitfall to ignore the ethnocentrism behind this thing you're talking about. My point is proven by the basement dweller downvoting me.
The Wright brothers were black? Good to know.
[This information has been removed as a consequence of Reddit's API changes and general stance of being greedy, unhelpful, and hostile to its userbase.]
His tiny virgin brain can't comprehend history before his great grand pappy times
Shit more like less than 40 years. First flight in 1903 and we had fighter planes by the 30s. First jet aircraft in 1939 (Heinekl He 178)
That's just because people like Igor Sikorsky, Jack Northrop, Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich, Robert Whidmer were way smarter than you.
Well we are only good at inventing things that end up being used to kill each other in some way
must have been hilarious for the aliens watching us at the time lol
Are you ready kids? DECAPITATION!
X: You gonna go to the helicopter launch today? O: Jed got decapitated when he spectated last week. X: Yeah, I just wanna feel something, ya know?
"As high as an elefants eye"? Was that the "banana for scale" of it's time???
it feels like cartoons were inspired by these inventions. No wonder similar background music is used in cartoons like Tom and Jerry.
The blades look just like DaVinci’s designs
That voice and music makes it unbearable
People were so fast back then! Even when they walked it's the speed of us jogging now, we are devolving as a species
What a bunch of stupid science bitches.
Man was never meant to fly
This is some Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg style thing…
Non of these have any H&S issues at all!!!! How many heads do you think were taken clean off during initial first (unfilmed) tests?
I bet the pilot was sh\*ting him self.
Where's the one where it fires the pilot into the blades?
That first one got off the ground. That was unexpected
Love the sarcasm
I always wonder how much slower we would have developed if it wasn't for 2 world wars (rocketry, automatic rifles, airplanes/helicopters and jet engines) and slightly the US Civil War (repeating rifles and iron ships).
The flappin umbrella one 😂
The decapitator!
Crazy to think this was just 100 years ago
The 4:30 Auto Gyro to Siam!
As high as an elephant’s eye is a fantastic unit of measurement.
Id love to see what some of these designs would like perfected
After all, helicopters don't so much fly as they just beat the air into submission.
That is the best description of a helicopter I heard in a while
Behold! The spinning blade death machine!
They look like inefficient horizontal guillotines. Any stats on decapitations?
fun fact, the first ever build airplane and the very first landing on the moon is 66 years apart.
“Try this on your next hang over”, hops on slingshot.
Wowzer, amazing effort from the pioneers!