Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the
strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft. 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 of supporting a craft on a 'pad', or cushion, of low-pressure
air, ringed with a curtain of higher pressure air. 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
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 to lift the vessel out of the water by making it
ride on a cushion of air, no more than one or two feet thick. This is done by
a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the bottom of the craft. It 'flies',
therefore, but it cannot fly higher - its action depends on the surface, water
or ground, over which it rides.#
The first tests on the Solent in 1959 caused a sensation. The hovercraft
travelled first over the water, then mounted the beach, climbed up the dunes,
and sat down on a road. Later it crossed the Channel, riding smoothly over the
waves, which presented no problem.#
Since that time, various types of hovercraft have appeared and taken up
regular service. The hovercraft is particularly useful in large areas with
poor communications such as Africa or Australia; it can become a 'flying
fruit-bowl', carrying bananas from the plantations to the ports; giant
hovercraft liners could span the Atlantic; and the railway of the future may
well be the 'hovertrain', riding on its air cushion over a single rail, which
it never touches, at speeds up to 300 m.p.h. - the possibilities appear
unlimited.&