Leonardo da Vinci’s cone-shaped helicopter concept is called the aerial screw.
Leonardo sketched the aerial screw around 1489. The drawing shows a large helical structure made from reeds, linen, and wire, with a circular platform beneath it. Leonardo theorized that turning the screw could make it rise through the air, much as a screw moves through a solid material.
The design is frequently called an early helicopter because its vertical-lift idea resembles the principle of a rotorcraft. However, it was not a practical helicopter: the proposed materials and human-powered mechanism could not provide enough lift. The concept therefore remained a paper design rather than a tested invention.
The aerial screw is also distinct from Leonardo’s flapping-wing ornithopter. The two designs demonstrate different approaches to flight—rotary lift and wing flapping—and both appeared in Leonardo’s broader investigations of air, motion, and anatomy.