Word: giffard
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...obvious that tank production was far behind necessities-and the Army looked around for a new Master General of Ordnance. "An obvious choice," says Liddell Hart, was Giffard Le Quesne Martel. This brilliant young man helped develop tanks in 1916. In November of that year he wrote a paper suggesting an entire Army of fighting vehicles. Later, he built the first one-man tank in his own garage. Known by his staff as Q, by his friends as "Slosher," he was, as all insiders knew, the man to produce tanks. But Martel was only a colonel, and when...
Significance. Aeronauts began 100 years ago to try to make steam engines fly, because no other motive power existed. The first successful dirigible, flown by Henri Giffard in 1852, was steam-propelled. Ten years before, W. H. Phillips had sent aloft a small model helicopter with a steam engine in it. Langley's first successful flying model, in 1896, was steam driven. Maxim worked on the idea. But no full size airplane flew. And before one did, Charles M. Manly had built a gasoline engine lighter per horsepower than any steam plant produced so far. When it was proven...