For centuries men dreamed of achieving vertical flight. In 400 A. D. Chinese children played with a fan-like toy that spun upwards and fell back to the earth as rotation ceased. Leonardo da Vinci conceived the first mechanical apparatus, called a "Helix", which could carry a man straight up, but this was only a design and was never tested.
The ancient dream was finally realized in 1940 when a Russian engineer piloted a strange looking craft of steel tubing with a rotating fan on top. It rose awkwardly and vertically into the air from a standing start, hovered a few feet above the ground, went sideways and backwards, and then settled back to the earth. That vehicle was called a helicopter.
Imaginations were fired. Men dreamed of going to work in their own personal helicopters. People anticipated that vertical flight transports would carry millions of passengers as do the airliners of today. Such fantastic expectations were not fulfilled. The helicopter has now become an extremely useful machine. It excels in military missions, carrying troops, guns and strategic instruments where other aircraft cannot go. Corporations use them as airborne offices, many metropolitan areas use them in police work, construction and logging companies employ them in various advantageous ways, engineers use them for site selection and surveying; and oil companies use them as the best way to make offshore and remote work stations accessible to crews and supplies. Any urgent mission to a hard-to-get-to place is a likely task for a helicopter. Among their other multitude of uses: deliver people across town, fly to and from airports, assist in rescue work, and aid in the search for missing or wanted persons.
According to the passage, people expect that______.

A. helicopters could eventually replace the airliners of today
B. their imaginations fired by the Russian engineer's invention would be realized in the future
C. their fantastic expectations about helicopters could be fulfilled by airliners of today
D. helicopters would someday be able to carry millions of people from place to place as airliners are now doing