2 Pounds - Charles III The Flying Car, Silver Proof

Issued to mark the centenary of the first practical autogyro flight by Juan de la Cierva in January 1923, this piece commemorates a chapter in British aviation history that tends to get overshadowed by fixed-wing developments of the same decade. Cierva's C.4 lifted off from Cuatro Vientos airfield near Madrid — not British soil — but the Royal Aero Club and British manufacturers, chiefly Avro, were instrumental in developing his patents into viable production aircraft through the late 1920s and 1930s.

The autogyro never achieved the commercial penetration its early advocates predicted, but it directly informed the rotor mechanics that made the helicopter viable.