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Hydrofoil Boats were co-invented by Alexander Graham Bell & Casey Baldwin in 1908. The American Department of War had called for proposals to build submarine chasers in the form of motorboats. Bell argued that a hydrofoil was the better choice, it could skim over a mine-infested bay in the same way that a skitterbug moves across a pond.
Enrico Forlanini, was an Italian engineer whose interests included airships, aircraft and helicopters. His hydrofoil developments started in 1898 with a series of model tests from which he arrived at several simple mathematical relationships. These allowed him to proceed with the design and construction of a full scale craft.
Forlanini's designs were characterized by a "ladder" foil system. You can see from a drawing of his concept and a copy of an old photograph what is meant by this aptly named ladder foil. Forlanini's model experiments had shown him that lift was proportional to the square of speed, therefore less foil area was required as speed increased. He conveniently obtained this decrease in foil area with the ladder scheme. The craft weighed about 2,650 pounds and had a 60 hp engine driving contrarotating airscrews. Although designed to fly at a speed of 56 mph, records, according to Leslie Hayward, show that during tests on Lake Maggiore, Italy in 1906 a speed of 42.5 mph was obtained.
The first evidence of the use of hydrofoils on a boat or ship was in a British patent of 1869. It was granted to Emmanuel Denis Farcot, a Parisian, who claimed that "adapting to the sides and bottom of the vessel a series or inclined planes or wedge formed pieces, which as the vessel is driven forward will have the effect of lifting it in the water and reducing the draught." Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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