Sir Christopher Cockerell

Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI was a british inventor. He was born in Cambridge on the 4th of June 1910, and died on the 1st of June 1999 in Hythe, Hampshire. During his life, he filed 99 patents, but he was most famous for inventing the hovercraft.

Cockerell was schooled in the Church of England School, Gresham's School, in Holt, Norfolk. He graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge, in '31, where he had studied engineering.

He then got a job in a small engineering company, before returning to university to study electronics. After that, in '35, Cockerell went to work for Marconi. During the war, he worked developing Radar. In '50, he left Marconi, and started his own yacht hire company on the ‘Broads.

But in ‘53, he started thinking about the problem of speed. How could you get a yacht to travel faster? Cockerell soon identified that the problem yas with friction. He had heard about previous atempts to reduce friction be blowing the draft out of the water. But this used to much power to be economical, or posible. As soon as you blow the air under the craft, it leaks straight out. Which is when he had a stroke of genius, instead of just blowing the craft out of the water, one could blow a stream of air around the operimiter of the craft. The fast moving air,he reconed, would form a virtual wall which would partially prevent air from leaking out.

To test this idea, he devised an experiment. Using the famous two tins experiment, and discovered that his theory gave almost four times as much lift. After several years of development he took his invetion to Lord Somerleyton.

But none of the forces were interested, and as Cockerell later said:

The Navy said it was a 'plane not a boat; the Air Force said it was a boat not a 'plane; and the Army were plain not interested.
- Christopher Cockerell

So with the hovercraft delisted, Cockerell then persuaded the NDRC to commision an experimental craft, which they did. The winner of the contract was Saunders-Roe. The hovercraft, named SR·N1, for Saunders Roe Nautical 1 was started in ‘58, and was finished by June, the next year. On the 11th of that month, it was flown for the first time, in front of an astonished crowd of spectators. The hovercraft had a ‘hover height’ of about 23cm (11in). Just over a month later, it was shipped over to France, and on the 25th of July, it was flown across the ‘Channel insidently, on the 50th anniversary of Berloit‘s crossing.

Cockerell remained very active in hovercraft development, filing a very large number of patents for he work on hovercraft. He was directly involved in the design of a number of early hovercraft, and appeared at a number of hovercraft advents, such as the opening of several ‘hover ports’.

In later life, he developed the Cockerell Raft, a device that harvested power from the waves, for which he filed 3 patents.

He died on the 1 June, ‘99, a few days before his 90th birthday, and a few days before the 40th anniversary of the hovercraft. After he died, the hovercraft industry collapsed. In just over a year, the SR·N4 service across the ‘Channel stopped. He has been outlived by his wife, who remains active in hovercraft shows.

Links

• www.hovercraftsomerleyton.org.uk - More about his monument at his birthplace
• www.oxforddnb.com - Cockerell’s concise Biography ( membership required )
• www.hovercraft-museum.org - The Hovercraft Museum’s Website