Of the 112 patents published in the US by Nikolai Tesla, the last related to VTOL and was filed over twenty years prior to his death, begging the question of what happened in his final decades. Ironic though to think of how profitably the inventor of AC motors might have applied them to his own aerial efforts in the form of eVTOL a century on.
Reviewing the contents of the Vertical Flight Society eVTOL database it is interesting to see that the combined efforts of humankind don't come close to the output of the likes of Tesla and Da Vinci in the field, a sideline for each in between supplying siege-engines for Medici or electricity for Americans.
Two things struck me during the review of the VFS database, however. Firstly that it appears to be foremost a gallery of computer-rendered artwork rather than actual flying-machines and secondly that my own work is probably viewed by most, perhaps rightly, as something of a joke.
A joke which therefore requires something of a re-think.
The patent describes a tilt-wing aircraft, a technology trialed in the more adventurous 1950s, -60s and -70s which nonetheless awaited current (!) developments to regain its promise and not least by the efforts of https://www.dufour.aero
