Ernst Otto Schmidt 1872-1938: Passionate Helicopter Inventor

Abstract

Ernst Otto Schmidt is practically unknown in the row of aeronautical and especially helicopter pioneers. This is be-cause his profession was a decoration painter and he earned good reputation at the time. However, he also was fas-cinated by the idea to vertically take off and land with a machine, experimented more than half of his life with models and held two patents for his designs (issued 1924 and 1939). Oral reports state that one demonstration flight was performed in 1929 and a U.S. businessman offered funding that Schmidt denied. Schmidt was afraid of being laughed at and kept his experiments secret for a long time. Without a wealthy sponsor his designs never came to fruition, partly because he also lacked any aeronautical engineering education. However, some ideas he had were realized by others at much later times. A book about Ernst Otto Schmidt was published by his grandson, the co-author of this paper. Additional personal correspondence from his family archive and further material found by the author are provided here for the first time.