Villard

   Henri Villard was a French national who moved to Belgium from 1898 to 1914 to work out a series of helicopters, 6 in all, among his other studies of aviation subjects.

   1. In 1901 he built a propeller - or perhaps a rotor. No further aircraft for it has been discovered.
  
   2. A machine was being completed at Tarbes in 1909. It or another was later being completed at La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon. In August 1909 he was sent a 50 hp Gnome and completed his rig, which he thought would lift 3 people.

   Aviator: an early, perhaps the first, Villard effort at vertical flight, consisted of a large umbrella-like rotor of 9.1-meter diameter on a shaft, off which the pilot sat with a horizontal propeller in front of him and a steerable circular rudder behind him. The rotor was a disc of silk stretched over a wheel of double wire spokes, and was to serve as a gyroscope for stability as it turned, and as a parachute in case of trouble. A photograph shows a similar helicopter with 2 overhead rotating discs - either a modification of the first Aviator, or a new machine. The first one was finished in 1902.