Served straight up: the Archimedes screw took the flying machine in an entirely new direction. From: Mechanical Engineering-CIME | Date: December 1, 2003| Author: Winters, Jeffrey | COPYRIGHT 2003 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Its skeletal flame sat chained up in a Connecticut field, looking like a beast that had been left to starve. Indeed, everything about the VS-300 was bare-boned: The cockpit was just a seat in front of the exposed 75-horsepower engine; belts and pulleys drove the blades; the vertical rotor spun at the end of an awkward spar.

But as unlikely as it looked, the VS-300 was a flying machine. In the fall of 1939, it shook and sputtered and finally lifted off the ground in a con...