NCEIV29 0-0727 Flashcards
Lesson 29
Lesson 29 The hovercraft
Many strange ne
Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft.
In 1953, a form
In 1953, a former electronics engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell, who had turned to boat-building on the Norfolk Broads, suggested an idea on which he had been working for many years to the British Government and industrial circles.
It was the idea
It was the idea of supporting a craft on a ‘pad’, or cushion, of low-pressure air, ringed with a curtain of higher pressure air.
Ever since, peo
Ever since, people have had difficulty in deciding whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles – for it is something in between a boat and an aircraft.
As a shipbuilde
As a shipbuilder, Cockerell was trying to find a solution to the problem of the wave resistance which wastes a good deal of a surface ship’s power and limits its speed.
His answer was
His answer was to lift the vessel out of the water by a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the bottom of the craft.
It ‘flies’, the
It ‘flies’, therefore, but it cannot fly higher – its action depends on the surface, water or ground, over which it rides.
The first tests
The first tests on the Solent in 1959 caused a sensation.
The hovercraft
The hovercraft travelled first over the water, then mounted the beach, climbed up the dunes, and sat down on a road.
Later it crosse
Later it crossed the Channel, riding smoothly over the waves, which presented no problem.
Since that time
Since that time, various types of hovercraft have appeared and taken up regular service.
The hovercraft
The hovercraft is particularly useful in large areas with poor communications such as Africa or Australia;
it can become a
it can become a ‘flying fruit-bowl’, carrying bananas from the plantations to the ports;
giant hovercraf
giant hovercraft liners could span the Atlantic;
