helicopter [L19th] The first helicopter did not appear until the 1920s, but the word had already been invented by then, first of all in French—the science fiction writer Jules Verne wrote of a helicopter in The Clipper of the Clouds (1886). The French word was based on Greek helix ‘spiral’ and pteron ‘wing’, which gave us the name of the flying reptile the pterodactyl [E19th].