Word: hydrofoil
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Denison, built by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. for the U.S. Maritime Administration, is the U.S.'s first high speed hydrofoil ferryboat. But in Italy, hydrofoil ferries are old hat. Neapolitans scarcely spare a glance any more for the sleek, 140-passenger aliscafi (winged hulls) that skim out across the Bay of Naples four times a day on the tourist run to Capri 18 miles away...
...Italians comfortably out in front in commerical hydrofoil development is Carlo Rodriquez, 51, a tall, reticent Sicilian engineer whose Spanish ancestors settled in Italy 150 years ago. Since 1958 Rodriquez has turned out 42 hydrofoil ferries at his 500-man Messina shipyard. Today, his aliscafi wing between Venice and Trieste, thread the fjords of Norway, link Caribbean islands, and are about to begin regular service between Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Last year Rodriquez sold $3,100,000 worth of hydrofoils; this year, with $1,800,000 in sales so far, he expects to do substantially better...
Legacy from Adolf. A trip in a Rodriquez hydrofoil is like water-skiing in a bus. Projecting down from the ferry's trim speedboat hull are legs with winglike metal skis on the end. As the ship picks up speed, the hull rises out of the water and skims along on its skis. Because it has only the drag of the skis, a Rodriquez hydrofoil needs only half the power of a conventional boat to achieve the same speed. More important, its top speed is three times that of the average conventional ferryboat-which means that it can move...
...international recognition in the '40s for his research on the characteristics of aircraft in flight, switched to spacecraft after the Government picked him in 1945 to create an organization to conduct freeflight experiments (and found time along the way to invent the nation's first successful hydrofoil system). He pushed the early work on manned satellites, was named to direct Project Mercury in 1958, set up the vital standards that made last week's successful flight possible-and stuck to them under pressure. Gilruth, who with Glenn received NASA's Distinguished Service Medal from President Kennedy...
Fighting against this trend, some major airframe makers tried diversification-turning to everything from hydrofoil boats to garbage disposal plants. Famed old Glenn L. Martin Co. retired altogether from the airframe business, prospered by putting its chips on missiles and space, and lately has branched into such solid civilian products as cement. In time, most of the major planemakers went over to missiles and space. Today, General Dynamics has its Atlas, Boeing Airplane Co. its Dyna-Soar and Minuteman, Douglas its Skybolt, and McDonnell Aircraft Corp. its Mercury capsule. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., which is the prime contractor for the Discoverer...