BAHÝL, Ján
* 25. 5. 1856, Zvolenská Slatina, Slovakia
† 13. 3. 1916, Bratislava, Slovakia
Inventor (helicopter)
After finishing grammar school in Zvolen, B. between 1878 and 1883 attended the Vienna Military Academy and finally joined the Hungarian Army as a technician. He was dealing with the artillery, railway and mechanical engineering, although his main attention was focusing on aviation, starting in the 1880s when he made his first attempts.
B. was focused primarily on the development of the helicopter. His passion is the result of contact with Ostor-Ostaszewski, Wilhelm →Kress and Granier in the early 1890s. His later design of the helicopter, for example the structure with a double propeller with a joint vertical axis remarkably resembled →Kress's solutions. The first project of B's helicopter from 1894 had two vertical axis, each of which had four horizontal propellers, all of which were driven by a chain drive. This idea, as well as the first ideas of other pioneers in this area was not realizable in practice.
In 1895 B. received the Austrian patent for the design with a horizontal propeller. From 1901 to 1903, B. cooperated with the manufacturer of carriages A. Marschal in Bratislava and produced an improved model of a helicopter type "Avion", for which they received another patent in 1906.
