Christopher cockerell biography

In Cockerell began work on the hovercroft. However, it took him another three years before he got full commercial backing for his project. The SR. He realized that optimally elevating a craft above water would reduce drag and significantly increase speed. However, it took several years to develop his theory, which he successfully tested using a vacuum cleaner and two tin cans.

Cockerell sold personal belongings to fund his research. Inhe built a working model from balsa wood and sold his first hovercraft patent No. Unable to secure private industry support, Cockerell approached the British government to explore military applications for his invention. While the defense potential was recognized, a lack of funding hampered progress.

With the support of Harold Wilson, Cockerell was introduced to the NRDC, which commissioned the construction of the first full-scale hovercraft in Disagreement Cockerell eventually resigned from Hovercraft Development Ltd, the firm overseeing the development of the industry, in protest at plans to amalgamate all the companies involved in British hovercraft production.

After his resignation, the hovercraft continued to be plagued by high costs of development and design, and dogged by technical problems.

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Byonly two British-built hovercraft remained in service on cross-Channel routes. Cockerell was an intensely patriotic man. Despite very poor rewards for his work in the UK, he refused offers of jobs with American competitors. Yet he always remained angry at the UK's failure to capitalise on new ideas.

Christopher cockerell biography: Christopher Cockerell of the United Kingdom

He was sent to Gresham's School at Holt in Norfolk, where he was a contemporary of the poet WH Auden and the future spy Donald Maclean, but he failed to distinguish himself academically. Dozens of inventions He scraped a place at Peterhouse, Cambridge, to study engineering and in began working on research and development for Marconi. His mother was the illustrator and designer Florence Kingsford Cockerell.

Christopher attended the preparatory school of St Faith's. He later returned to Cambridge to study radio and electronics. He began his career as a post graduate pupil working for W. Inhe went to work at the Marconi Companyand soon afterwards he married Margaret Elinor Belsham 4 September — September During his time in Chelmsfordhe led a research team in the Marconi hut at Writtle and worked on many systems, including radar.

After the war he contributed to the development of several sophisticated pieces of equipment, including radio location technology, and the first equipment used by the BBC in Alexandra Palace. The firm made little money, and Cockerell began to think how the craft could be made to go faster. He was led to earlier work by the Thornycroft company, in which a small vessel had been partially raised out of the water by a small engine.

Cockerell's greatest invention, the hovercraftgrew out of this work. It occurred to him that if the entire craft were lifted from the water, the craft would effectively have no drag.

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This, he conjectured, would give the craft the ability to attain a much higher maximum speed than could be achieved by the boats of the time. Cockerell's theory was that instead of just pumping air under the craft, as Thornycroft had, if the air were to be instead channelled to form a narrow jet around the perimeter of the craft, the moving air would form a momentum curtaina wall of moving air that would limit the amount of air that would leak out.

This meant that the same cushion of high-pressure air could be maintained by a much smaller engine; and for the first time, a craft could be lifted completely out of the water. Cockrell tested his designs across the village green opposite his house in the Broadland village of Somerleyton in Suffolk. He tested his theories using a vacuum cleaner and two tin cans.

His hypothesis was found to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop, and he was forced to sell personal possessions to finance his research. Byhe had built a working model from balsa wood and had filed his first patent for the hovercraft, No. GB Cockerell had found it impossible to interest the private sector in developing his idea, as both the aircraft and the shipbuilding industries saw it as lying outside their core business.

He therefore approached the British Government with a view to interesting them in possible defence applications.