His family background (of minor Russian nobility) and his status as an engineer trained under the Tsar put him under threat from the communists, from which he fled by raft across the Gulf of Finland to a refugee camp in Helsinki before settling in Belgium in 1920, the only country (of the 26 to which he applied) to accept his asylum application.
[citation needed] Nicolas Florine worked at l'Administration de l'aéronautique, based in the buildings of the Hotel des Monnaies in Saint-Gilles (Brussels).
In 1926 he was responsible for initiating the Centre d'aérodynamisme located in Rhode-Saint-Genèse, on the outskirts of Brussels, whose first director was Professor Émile Allard.
The studies Florine performed here in 1926 led to patents related to helicopter control and in particular how to counteract the torque resulting from using two rotors.
[citation needed] In 1927 Nicolas Florine received financial support from the Belgian airline SNETA and the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique for the development of a helicopter.
After the implementation of scale models, one of which weighed 36 kg and left the ground several times, he built a first device (the "Type I") able to carry a pilot, propelled by a Hispano-Suiza water-cooled engine of 180 CV.
In order to balance the reaction torques, the axes of rotation of the rotors were inclined about 7° on either side of the longitudinal axis of the fuselage, laterally (one to the left and the other to the right).
The flights began on April 12, 1933, and on October 25 of the same year, near the beech forest of Soignes, the aircraft piloted by Mr. Robert Collin, engineer at the Belgian Aeronautics Technical Service, officially beat the record for time in the air of 9 min 58 s. A few months later, in 1934, when tested in Haren the team tried to beat the record of altitude of 18 meters realized in Rome by the machine designed by Ascanio.
[citation needed] The onset of World War II, with the cost of national rearmament, deprived Florine of a budget.
Florine worked on a quadrirotor project until 1949 and remained attached to the Service technique de l'aéronautique (STAé) until his retirement In 1956.
[citation needed] An area in the Air and Space section of the Royal Museum of the Army and Military History in Brussels is reserved for Florine; it presents documents (photos, plans, drawings, etc.)