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The design that Igor Sikorsky settled on for his VS-300 was a smaller tail rotor. Most helicopters have a single main rotor, but torque created by its aerodynamic drag must be countered by an opposed torque. There are three basic types: hingeless, fully articulated, and teetering although some modern rotor systems use a combination of these. Main rotor systems are classified according to how the rotor blades are attached and move relative to the hub. At the top of the mast is the attachment point for the rotor blades called the hub. The mast is a cylindrical metal shaft that extends upwards from the transmission.
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The rotor consists of a mast, hub and rotor blades. A rotor system may be mounted horizontally, as main rotors are, providing lift vertically, or it may be mounted vertically, such as a tail rotor, to provide horizontal thrust to counteract torque from the main rotors. The rotor system, or more simply rotor, is the rotating part of a helicopter that generates lift. In the United States military, the common slang is "helo" pronounced with a long "e". English language nicknames for "helicopter" include "chopper", "copter", "heli", and "whirlybird".
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For various reasons, the word is often erroneously, from an etymological point of view, analysed by English speakers into heli- and copter, leading to words like helipad and quadcopter. The English word helicopter is adapted from the French word hélicoptère, coined by Gustave Ponton d'Amécourt in 1861, which originates from the Greek helix ( ἕλιξ) "helix, spiral, whirl, convolution" and pteron ( πτερόν) "wing".
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