Word: cierva
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Juan de la Cierva, 74, reactionary Minister of Justice in Spam's last cabinet under King Alfonso; of diabetes; at Madrid's Norwegian Legation, where he had hidden all through the civil war. He died not knowing that his namesake son, inventor of the autogiro, had been killed in a K. L. M. air crash 13 months before (TIME...
...Madrid in 1912 the French proprietor of a motorcycle shop owned a French biplane which he crashed during an exhibition. Chagrined, he dumped the wreckage in his back yard. To chubby, 17-year-old Juan de la Cierva and two cronies, this was tempting bait. They offered to rebuild the plane if the Frenchman would test-fly it. Laughingly he agreed. All that was salvageable were the motor and wheels. All the resources the three boys had were $60 and a knowledge of arithmetic. Nonetheless, to Madrid's amazement, their jerry-built contraption flew. It was the first Spanish...
...second tri-motor. The test pilot crashed it by flying too low too slow. This rammed into the young designer's mind the two prime weaknesses of airplanes: they are utterly dependent upon their motors; they need lots of room to land or take off. Juan de la Cierva resolved to remove these flaws, began toying with helicopters (planes with the propeller faced vertically). He got the idea of disconnecting the helicopter propeller from the engine, enlarging it. Result in 1920 was the first autogiro, which did not fly. Neither did the second or third model. Then, according...
...first ridiculed as "the whirling dervish of the air," the autogiro gradually improved during a long tour of Europe punctuated by frequent crashes, which proved the giro's safety because Pilot de la Cierva was never hurt. In 1928, when he flew the English Channel, he won recognition. From then on, England was autogiro headquarters. English capital financed the Cierva Autogiro Co. Inventor de la Cierva, Royalist son of King Alfonso's Minister of War, was glad to stay away from Spain after King Alfonso was dethroned. Except for an occasional spree with his four children, he devoted...
Autogiros have still to be adapted to transport flying, since they are relatively slow and can carry only small loads. One morning last week, when Juan de la Cierva wished to go to the Continent, he stepped aboard a twin-motored Douglas DC2 monoplane belonging to Royal Dutch Airlines at Croydon. Aboard with him went a crew of four and twelve other passengers, including Admiral Salomon Arvid Lindman, onetime Prime Minister of Sweden...