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Basically I saw a documentary on helicopters where this is mentioned.
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Would you downplay my product if I was your competitor in business?
This is completely unintelligible. Please rephrase your question?
"Like all novices we began with the helicopter in childhood, but soon saw that the helicopter had no future, and dropped it. The helicopter does with great labor only what the balloon does without labor, and is no more fitted than the balloon for rapid horizontal flight. If its engine stops, it must fall with deathly violence, for it can neither glide like the aeroplane or float like the balloon. The helicopter is much easier to design than the aeroplane, but is worthless when done."
Wilbur Wright, letter written in 1907. Quoted in the 1954 book Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Found at https://www.aviationquotations.com/predictionquotes.html
I'd add that with the power and reliability of engines at the time, he was mostly correct.
It's only with improvements to manufacturing/production techniques and safety that helicopters then became viable.
Well, he also didn’t know about autorotation.
He wouldn’t have, that comment in the letter predates the start of development of autogyros and helicopters; the term itself only started appearing in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The first autogyro flew in 1923, full 20 years after Kitty Hawk; VS-300 first flew in 1940, a full 17 years after the autogyro and 37 ears after Kitty Hawk. Even after the first production helicopter (R-4), helicopters have very little payload capacity owing to the poor power to weight ratio of piston engines. It really wasn’t until the advent of gas turbine engines on UH-1s did helicopters actually became more broadly useful. I think Wilbur Wright can be forgiven for not prophesying the development helicopter correctly. For context, 40 years ago most people didn’t know what the internet was, let alone that everyone on earth will have cell phones that let them connect to it at anytime and just about anywhere they go.
Niel Armstrong and buzz aldrin didn’t think much of spacex either and testified to congress about it. Rockets aren’t supposed to land. 🤣
Wilbur said to leave the helicopter manufacturing to Bell and Sikorsky. Airbus and Agusta can suck it
OP, I highly recommend reading a book called "The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Blackhawks". It's an amazing insight on the development on the helicopter and its relation with other inventors such as Wright.
No. He never said that.