Bell-47D1 Helicopter

Arthur Young · 1945

This is the Bell 47-D1 helicopter, designed by Arthur Young and built in nineteen forty-five — the first helicopter anywhere licensed to carry civilians. Young was a philosopher by training, and he spent years in a barn flying model rotors before one of them would hold steady. This is the real machine, not a model: aluminium, steel, and an acrylic bubble, forty-two feet from nose to tail.

Medium Aluminum, steel, and acrylic plastic · Dimensions 9' 2 3/4" x 7' 11" x 42' 8 3/4" (281.3 x 302 x 1271.9 cm) · Credit Marshall Cogan Purchase Fund

Hanging beside it in The Robert B. Menschel Galleries: The Shape of Things, African Proposals, project, Perspective