What was Leonardo da Vinci’s spiral flying-machine concept commonly called?
Answer
Aerial screw
Leonardo da Vinci’s spiral flying-machine concept was commonly called the aerial screw.
Leonardo sketched the aerial screw around 1489, describing a large helical structure intended to rise by “screwing” into the air. The design is often compared with a modern helicopter rotor because both concepts involve rotating surfaces generating lift, although Leonardo’s proposed mechanism was not a practical helicopter.
The aerial screw was probably inspired partly by the behavior of Archimedes’ screw, a device for moving water. Leonardo adapted the spiral principle to aviation, imagining a linen-covered frame supported by reeds and driven by people turning a central mechanism.
The sketch is historically important because it shows Leonardo thinking about vertical flight centuries before powered helicopters existed. It did not fly, and its materials, scale, and human-power requirements would have made operation extremely difficult. The label “helicopter” is therefore a modern comparison, not Leonardo’s original name for the machine.