It is technically the centenary of the configuration next year, it having been pioneered by a Frenchman in 1922 as a diversion from inventing the stroboscope. A feature of the earliest experiments in aviation is that they were developed by polymaths like Bell, or another way of putting it would be to say that every inventor is drawn to trying their hand at a flying machine sooner or later.
What is different with electrification is how much easier it makes for inventors like me to envisage something altogether simpler. The outline you see in the previous post can be built to raise an adult using as few as a dozen structural members besides the pair of landing skids. Count the alloy tubes required by this quadcopter from 1958, and be amazed at what electricity can do.
