Christopher Cockerell

In 1955, while working to reduce the friction between a boat's hull and the water it traveled through, Cockerell came up with the idea of the hovercraft. His first model was made out of tin cans powered by a vacuum cleaner, and floated effortlessly over water and hard ground alike. The British government rewarded his idea by classifying it "secret", but didn't fund further development until they found out a team in Switzerland was working on a similar idea. He was knighted in 1969, but the government paid him only 150,000 pounds for his concept, and then only after a lengthy fight. Sir Christopher died in Southampton, England, at age 88 on June 1, the 40th anniversary of the launch of the first civilian hovercraft, which crossed the English Channel in just 20 minutes. From This is True for 30 May 1999 Suggestions for further reading: Kinetic Contraptions: Build a Hovercraft, Airboat, and More with a Hobby Motor by Curt Gabrielson Amazon Price: $13.22   Discover the Hovercraft by Kevin Jackson Amazon Price: $11.99 Customer Review: This books gave me everything I needed to write my Hovercraft study project. It contains history, operating information and a great experiment to try. It made my project so easy. A one stop resource! Highly recommended.   Introduction to Radio Control Hovercraft by Kevin Jackson and Mark Porter Amazon Price: $22.95 Customer Review: I wanted to find out how to design and build my own model hovercraft and this book had everything I needed. There are details about the design of the body of the craft, motors to use and even how to connect up the radio control. The most difficult bi...   Introduction to Engineering Design Book 9, Second Edition Engineering Skills ... by James W Dally, Kevin M Calabro, Willian L Fourney, Gary A Pertmer, Guangming Zhang Amazon Price: Customer Review: I never recieved the book. I got conformation of ordering, like ordering number and emails and everything, but it never shoed up. If they ran out of the book or whatever I should have gotten a notice at least that it wouldnt arrive. Instead I sat aro...   Flight Test Lab: Hovercrafts: Build and Launch 4 Different Hovercrafts! by Lorraine Jean Hopping Amazon Price: Customer Review: Don't waste your money on this pamplet, which I basically flipped through in less then 30 seconds after receiving and read the whole thing. What a waste. Even if you are seriously into hovercrafts or just interested in starting out into the hobby of ...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

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