Exploring the Lineage from Renaissance Imagination to Twenty-first-century Urban Air Mobility

This historical paper explores the development of vertical lift. Beginning with Leonardo's aerial screw, a profound conceptual leap, which was a helical device intended to compress air beneath it and rise vertically. Though never constructed or flown, it represents the first recorded articulation of rotary lift. The idea of rising directly upward would echo through the dirigible era of the early twentieth century, the helicopter age of the mid-century, and the emerging era of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). This study traces that intellectual lineage and explores the technological and social forces that shaped the destiny of vertical passenger flight.