For some great minds, categorization is either a work in progress or an attempt doomed to failure. Buckminster Fuller, Howard Hughes and Leonardo da Vinci were all such great thinkers and inventors, and pigeonholing their legacies is a futile exercise. Their talents and accomplishments spanned disciplines and defy easy generalization. And when it comes to Igor Sikorsky, the same is true. He is said to be the father of rotary flight, a claim that is shakier than the Wrights'. A French inventor's helicopter predated Sikorsky's by decades, but it could barely fly, though fly it did. Sikorsky's helicopter, the VS-300, was the first practical helicopter, and the machine it evolved into, the Sikorsky R-4, was the first helicopter to be produced in great numbers-131 rolled out the factory doors in the early 1940s.
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