biography
| name: |
Cockerell, Sir Christopher (Sydney)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1910–99)
|
| biography:
| Engineer, born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, EC England, UK. He studied at Cambridge and worked on radio and radar, before turning to hydrodynamics. In the early 1950s, experimenting with air as a lubricant between a boat's hull and the water, he invented the amphibious hovercraft. The first full-scale machine was built in 1958, and its prototype first crossed the English Channel successfully in 1959. In the course of his long life he patented more than 70 inventions, though the patent for the hovercraft went to a marketing corporation. He was knighted in 1969. |
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