Here is a helpful report on the work and legacy of .

Sikorsky’s work revolutionized aviation through several "firsts" that defined modern flight architecture:

He abandoned helicopters for fixed-wing aircraft, building the legendary "Russky Vityaz" and the "Ilya Muromets" bombers. He became a titan of conventional flight. But in his notebooks, hidden in Cyrillic script, he kept sketching the rotor.

The year was 1942, and the Connecticut winter was biting. Inside a drafty hangar, Captain Igor Sikorsky wiped grease from his hands with a rag that had seen better days. Surrounding him was the object of his obsession: the VS-300. It looked like a skeleton made of steel tubing, painted a dull silver, with a single main rotor spinning lazily overhead.

Before he was "Mr. Sikorsky" the industrialist, he was "Captain Sikorsky"—a title he earned as the Chief Engineer of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works in St. Petersburg during World War I. To understand is to understand the bridge between the frail, experimental gliders of the 1900s and the robust, heavy-lift rotorcraft of today.

), he developed a series of flying boats. Notable among these were the S-40 "American Clipper" and S-42, which Pan American Airways used to pioneer international commercial routes across the Atlantic and Pacific. The Practical Helicopter : In 1939, Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300