Hovercraft history. The history of hovercraft and air cushion vehicles Early thoughts of air cushions The idea of using an air-cushion as a means or aid to acceleration and reduction in (hydrodynamic) drag was first explored by Sir John Thornycroft, a British engineer, who, in the 1870's built some experimental models on the basis of an air cushion system that would reduce the drag of water on boats and ships. In 1877 he successfully patented the idea and his theory was that if a ship's hull was given a concave bottom, which could be filled - and replenished - with air, it would create significant additional lift. And so the air cushion effect was born. Decades later scientists and inventors were still busy with his ideas but without any practical applications. With the coming of the airplane however, it was noticed that additional lift was obtained if the plane flew closer to land or water, creating a "funnel effect", a cushion of air. The air lift that this funnel effect created differed with the type of wing and its height above ground. The effect was strongest if this height was between one half and one third of the (average) front-to-rear breadth of the wing.

Also known as "chord". The next two decades saw little interest in air cushion development. World War 1 saw a huge increase in the development of the airplane as a military weapon and even though the ground effect was known, airplanes were designed for speed and manoeuverability in the air rather than close to the ground. But because of the many difficulties these models were developed as flying boats rather than air cushion vechicles or ground effect flyers, using the ground effect for take-off from the water. No real hovercraft came along until the 1950's. The Boeing B-1 Flying boat in 1919. (c) Airline History . Flying boats, however, are an integral part of aviation and transport history becoming popular and practical in an era when landing strips and airports were still sparse. They are still used today and many of the older models that proved their worth the world over are lovingly maintained by collectors and enthusiasts. We highly recommend Airline History for a complete pictorial overview of Flying Boat history.

Early uses of the air cushion effect 1920 - 1949 The German-built Dornier Do-X flying boat proved the reality of Thornycroft's theory in 1929, when, during an Atlantic crossing, it flew much closer to the ocean's surface than was usual in order to take advantage of the air cushion effect. The trip time was significantly reduced as a result and the aircraft's performance that much greater. The Do-X Flying Boat became quite a legend in its day, especially when it started flying around the world in 1926. Despite its enormous fuel consumption - around 400 gallons of gas per hour - it was one of the first large passenger planes capable of 150 seats. But its engines tended to overheat and, after its arrival in New York in 1931 it was refitted with American water-cooled engines. During World War 2 the Dornier factories made several Do-X flying boats for a variety of purposes, from transatlantic mail carriers to bombers.

(For more detailed information on Dornier's Do-X see also Dafkurse (D), Aviation Posters , EADS (D), Avions-Legendaires (F) articles.) Many flying boats were built during this era, and they formed the forefront and backbone of many aviation routes across the world, especially on the long haul destinations. The Russian Sikorksy proved exceptionally talented at manufacturing flying boats and many airlines ordered their planes from his factories. The military are always at the forefront in taking advantage of technological developments, and so it was with the air cushion effect. Another decade later, for example, during World War 2, scouting aircraft made good use of the air cushion effect to extend their reconnaissance flights. Dornier's Do-X Flying Boat The Do-X at rest in Rio de Janeiro's harbour with Sugarloaf Mountain as backdrop. (c) EADS . The first real hovercraft - 1950 to 1960 The successful use of the air cushion effect was not lost on engineers after World War 2 was over and in the early 1950's British, American and Swiss engineers started to rethink Sir John Thornycroft's problem.

The Englishman Christopher Cockerell, commonly seen as the father of the hovercraft, being retired from the army, settled into boat building where he soon got captivated by Thornycroft's problem of reducing the hydrodynamic drag on the hull of a boat by using some kind of air cushion. His theory was that, instead of using the plenum chamber - an empty box with an open bottom as Thornycroft had devised - air was instead pumped into a narrow tunnel circumnavigating the entire bottom, it would flow towards the center and form a more effective air cushion. This peripheral jet would cause the air to build up enough pressure to equal the weight of the craft and, as it would have nowhere to go, the pressure would force the craft up, clearing it off the ground altogether. Cockerell successfully tested his theory and filed his first patent in 1955. The year after he formed a company called Hovercraft Ltd. He further envisioned and partially worked out other problems of the hovercraft principle that still have to be fully exploited by modern hovercraft builders. One of these was to re-use the air for greater overall efficiency.

Thinking that his air cushion vehicles would be eminently suitable as amphibious craft he approached the British Ministry of Supply, the government's defence equipment procurement authority with his findings. Soon after, in 1956, the air cushion vehicle was classified as "secret" and a construction contract was placed with a British aircraft and seaplane manufacturer. The result was the SR.N1 in 1959. The first SR.N1 weighed four tons and could carry three men. Its maximum speed was 25 knots (1 knot = 1.15 miles or 1.85 kilometres per hour) on calm water. It had a 6-inch (15 cm) rubberized skirt to make it easier to contain the air cushion on uneven ground. Significant wear and tear of the skirt through friction with the water at high speeds made it necessary to use more durable material and a rubber and plastic mixture was developed by 1963. The length of the skirt had also been extended to about 4 feet (1.2 m). By this time the Americans, the French, Japanese and Swedes had begun to be interested in the air cushion vehicle and its possibilities and companies sprang up the world over.

As far as experimental vehicles were concerned the Soviets, in their race for technological supremacy, were as prolific as the Americans in building craft of all sizes, shapes and types. Nothing was too weird or technologically theoretical but it was built. Especially after World War 2, during the 1950's and 1960's did experimental constructions reach extraordinary proportions. Other parts were also improved on, the craft now used a gas turbine engine, and was capable of carrying a payload of about seven tons, achieving a maximum speed of 50 knots. In June 1959 the SR.N1 crossed the English Channel, exactly 50 years after Louis Bl�riot's first flight across. Christopher Cockerell's SR.N1 hovercraft - 1959. Most of these craft were never put into production, many didn't even work properly, and modern day collectors will pay large amounts to add these craft to their collections. But not only governments and their military where entranced with the hovercraft and the air cushion vehicle, commercial companies like Ford Motor Company even came up with a hovercar which it called the "Glideair" in 1959.

It was never made commercially available for a number of reasons however. Parallel invention While Cockerell was busy designing and building his hovercraft in the U.K., across the Atlantic ocean Colonel Melville Beardsley was developing an air cushion vehicle of his own in the 1950's. The skirt around the ACV platform which contains the compressed air and makes the ACV a stable vehicle is the invention of Colonel Beardsley, for example, for which patent Cockerell later paid $80,000. The modern Hovercraft would not exist without it. A gifted man of many inventions Colonel Beardsley continued to work on ACV's for the US Naval laboratory across the river from Annapolis, Maryland through the 70's, leading to the modern amphibious military craft of today. He passed away in November, 1998, at the age of 85. Hovercraft and Ram-wing Craft in the 1960's and beyond Ram-wing craft Ram-wing craft were craft based on the principle of a wing using the ground effect described above. They were first developed by American aerodynamicists in the early 1960's.

In the global technological race that was going on during the 1960's an amazing array of wing-in-ground effect vehicles were built the world over. The Russians in particular explored this principle in a myriad of craft, like the Ekranoplan (shown at the right) and its infamous Caspian Sea Monster. Although few of the craft built got beyond the experimental stage, they did show that a combination of airfoil and air-cushion technology provided enough stationary hovering capability. This lift was then transferred into forward speed. Even though it was now possible to surpass the theoretical hover speed limit of around 320 kilometers per hour (200 mph), it became clear that the air cushion would not stay in place above these speeds and another solution had to be found. The ram-wing craft did prove beyond doubt that the air cushion principle was a practical one and had advantages over wheels and other methods of transport in certain situations. Early hovercraft - sidewall craft The air cushion principle found an application in the form of a sidewall craft in 1963, reusing the plenum chamber principle of Thornycroft.

The resultant craft was not able to leave the water because it was more of a boat but by using the plenum chamber and its air cushion effect hydrodynamic drag was significantly reduced. An advantage of a sidewall air cushion vehicle over the more amphibious hovering craft is that water propellers can be used, effecting in greater steering control, especially at low speeds. Another positive effect was the greater stability of the craft as opposed to the circular skirt. Hovercraft today and in the future Early interest in hovercraft enjoyed a peak in the early 1960's as everyone jumped to take advantage of this amazing vehicle. However, by the end of the decade only the British had produced a range of feasible and practical craft. The problems inherent of the air cushion vehicle, such as Cockerell and others had foreseen, regarding steering control, noise, salt and skirt erosion, caused many countries to abandon their hovercraft development programs in favour of other, more established multi-function vehicles or to use different vehicles specialised in each terrain or function.

Since the 1970's however, and especially over the last decade, a renewed interest in the hovercraft as (passenger) transport (see Hovercraft in Use ), military transport and weapons carrier (see Military hovercraft ) and exploratory vehicle (see Hovercraft news and development ) has taken ground, solving many of these problems in their development (see Hovercraft Construction ). Technology in general made large steps forward during the past twentyfive years, enabling organisations and governments, as well as many enthusiasts (see Hovercraft Clubs ) to enjoy the hovercraft vehicle in its many forms including the very popular Remote Control model size hovercraft! (See Model Hovercraft .) As far as hovercraft and their spinoff technology is concerned the future looks ever brighter. Ram-wing craft links The 50s - the Technology, Science, and Inventions The 50s - the technology, science, and inventions AMV Photo/ Iconica/ Getty Images Updated October 18, 2015.

Timeline < 1000 - 1300 < 1400 < 1500 < 1600 < 1700 < 1800 < 1900 < 2000 The 50s have always been described as a conservative period socially, however, advancements in technology were about to change all that. During the 50s, television became the dominant media. While television had been invented many years previous, the 50s saw nearly every family buying a television set, and nearly everyone watching television for longer and longer periods of time. Television broadcasts became our number one source of news, information, and entertainment during the 50s. Live news broadcasts were now possible coast to coast, and this has changed our world forever. BBC Inside Out - Inside Out - South East: Monday March 6, 2006 Hovercraft Final crossing - the Hovercraft bows out Inside Out looks back to the 1970s - the decade when the Hovercraft was the height of modern travel. It seemed that you couldn't get anything more exciting, more futuristic, and more glamorous than the Hovercraft.

It was an exciting concept - being able to go to sea but not be on a ship. The cross Channel service from Dover was run by Seaspeed, a subsidiary of British Rail. But hot on their heels was Hoverlloyd. It built a Hoverport in Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate in 1969. "It was absolutely fantastic..." Hoverlloyd was a brand new Swedish company. In terms of enterprise, staff motivation and sheer sexiness, Hoverlloyd won hands down. Inside Out speaks to former employees of Hoverlloyd and finds out about what it was like working for the company in its 1970s heyday. Bumpy ride The Pegwell Bay Hoverport opened for business in April 1969. But the first service to use Pegwell Bay goes back to 1966. At the helm - Captain Lloyd and his team The first Hovercraft from Pegwell, the Swift, was run by a Swedish company called Hoverlloyd. Hovercraft were fantastic machines, invented by the engineer, Christopher Cockerell. They were faster than anything else on the water. So what was the catch?

Big ship ferries cut through the waves, but Hovercraft skimmed the surface - as a result, passengers felt every bump. Genevieve Payne, a former stewardess, remembers the bumpy ride: "I remember the summer of 1979 as a year of really bad weather and rough seas. "I was out working on a craft in a Force 8. So on this day we were literally hitting the ceiling. Passengers were throwing up everywhere. "One lady became hysterical I had to slap her to calm her down!" And there were other ways in which Hovercraft flights didnt go smoothly. Genevieve Payne remembers the bumpy ride On 29 October 1969 a propellor came off a Hovercraft and caused £50,000 damage to Pegwell Bay Hoverport. Another Hovercraft once got beached and damaged at Joss Bay Pat Lloyd, one of the crew, remembers having a few rough rides: "I experienced a few 'plough ins'. This is where the craft loses height and just stops mid channel.

"Cars would end up crunching together in the car deck, and if you were a stewardess, youd often get covered in duty free." End of an era But by the end of the 1970s Hoverlloyd was in trouble. Rising costs forced them to merge with their sworn enemy. Hoverlloyd and Seaspeed became Hoverspeed, and the whole operation moved to Dover. All aboard - Hoverlloyd's hostesses with the mostest Today all that remains of Pegwell Bay Hoverport is an enormous stretch of overgrown tarmac and a few white lines. Eileen Randall lives at the cliffs edge with views across Pegwell Bay. She has lived there since 1949 and remembers life before, during and after the Hovercrafts. "It was quite a spectacle to watch it going by so close. It was noisy," she recalls. She also had a family connection to the vehicle. Her husband Derek worked on the engineering side for the Hovercrafts. Fond memories HOVERCRAFT FACT FILE The first recorded design for an air cushion vehicle was put forward by Swedish designer and philosopher, Emmanual Swedenborg in 1716.

The craft resembled an upturned dinghy with a cockpit in the centre. It was never built. In the early 1950s Christopher Cockerell, who ran a small boatyard on the Norfolk Broads, begins experimenting with designs using an air cushion raising a craft above the ground, enabling it to clear small waves, and make the transition from water to land. 1956/1957 - Cockerell produces a working model Hovercraft. 1959 - Cockerell's Saunders Roe Nautical One (SR.N1) appears at the Isle of Wight for its first public run. 1960/1961 - Engineering breakthrough with the addition of the skirt to the craft. July 1962 - Vickers VA 3 starts the world's first experimental passenger Hovercraft service between the Wirral and North Wales. A passenger service is also started from Portsmouth to Ryde. 1963 - Experimental service across the Bristol Channel. 1966 - First Hovercraft service to France from Ramsgate to Calais. Other cross Channel services come on board.

1968 -The world's first Hovercraft car ferry makes its maiden flight from Dover to Boulogne, crossing in 35 minutes. 1978 - New Dover Hoverport ready for service. 1985 - The Princess Margaret Hovercraft was blown into the breakwater at Dover with the loss of four passengers and severe damage to the craft. 1991 - Hoverspeed announce that the Hovercraft will be phased out and four SeaCats will operate its crossings in 1992. The Hovercraft were becoming too costly to run. Today the Hovercraft crew is left with memories of the best job they ever had. John 'Biggles' Lloyd has fond memories of being captain. He describes being at the controls of the Hovercraft as, "like driving a sports car on sheet ice." Former stewardess, Betty Dowell, started her job in 1972 when she was in her 30s. During her career at Hoverlloyd she amassed 10,000 channel crossings, more than any other stewardess Mo Cairns, who now works in the Hovercraft Museum, started as a stewardess in 1972, when she was 24.

It was seen as a really glamorous job to have: "As a Stewardess your appearance was paramount. A beautician would come in during training to teach the stewardesses how to apply make up." MOalso remembers working and partying hard: "Some nights we didnt get any sleep, we used to go out after work and party afterwards". Genevieve Payne worked at Hoverlloyd from 1978 to 1980. She was a student at Canterbury and worked as a stewardess during the summer seasons: "It was drilled into us that we would have to constantly check our appearance. "We had to wear our hair up, our white gloves had to be pristine." The mid 1970s was the age of the Hovercraft as far as the Channel was concerned. By the end of 1974 nearly 1½ million people a year going across channel by Hovercraft, 30% of passenger traffic. But by the '80s Hoverlloyd was in trouble. They merged with Seaspeed in 1981 to form Hoverspeed but it only postponed the inevitable. Today the Hovercraft is an icon of its times, forever remembered for its futuristic design.

Links relating to this story: Wild horses update Wild horses - a new addition to the family Do you remember the wild horses of Stodmarsh from the first episode of this series of Inside Out? We look back at the wild horses of Kent and update their story. The wild horses were specially imported from Holland to Stodmarsh Nature Reserve near Canterbury by English Nature, the Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Wildlife Park. They help to restore wetland habitats by eating the grass and reeds to stop the woody scrub building up. Without them the wetland would dry up and become woodland. These horses come from Holland, and they are genetically the closest thing to wild horses that roamed across England 7,000 years ago. At Stodmarsh they've been left to their own devices, and now a brand new member of the group has been born. Keeping the horses wild The birth is the good news, but the bad news is that the tiny foal is limping really badly. There's something wrong with its back leg. Tentative steps - the new wild foal faces the world Peter Smith from Wildwood Wildlife wants to get close up to check out the problem, but the mother with a new born is very protective.

The whole point of bringing wild horses to the nature reserve was because they can look after themselves. In this case, Peter is happy to break the rule and call in a vet to give the young foal a hand. Fortunately, it looks like this is probably just an injury during birth. Three other horses are also about to give birth. But the very fact that a new foal has been born, and there's more on the way, means the future's looking bright for the wild horses of Stodmarsh. The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 6: 1951-1960 | WIRED The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 6: 1951-1960 subscribe 6 months for $5 - plus a FREE Portable Phone Charger. 2 hours There is no future. There is no past. There is only Donald Glover rocking this look. bit.ly/2jEg1wW Time of Publication: 6:30 am.

6:30 am The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 6: 1951-1960 Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest. Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more. This week's installment takes us back to 1951-1960, when computers moved from vacuum tubes to transistors, the first photo was scanned digitally and hula hoops created a market for plastics. We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later. 1953: The Transistorized Computer (Computers) In the '40s, the computer became reality.

But it was still made with vacuum tubes. Early computers like Britain's Colossus and the University of Pennsylvania's ENIAC were dependent on thousands of glass cylinders that worked a lot like light bulbs. These vacuum tubes were not only big and bulky. They were slow and power-hungry. They put off a ridiculous amount of heat. And their lives were short. But then, in 1953, a researcher at Britain's University of Manchester, Dick Grimsdale, built a computer based on solid-state transistors. The transistor was invented in the '40s by three researchers at Bell Labs: John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. Like the vacuum tube triode, the transistor was an electrical switch capable of storing information. One electrical state represented one value, and a second state represented another. But it was based on semiconducting materials such as germanium, and this meant it was smaller, faster, cooler, and able to live much longer. The University of Manchester's experimental machine is widely regarded as the first transistorized computer, though the Control Data Corporation and Bell Labs would soon follow with commercial machines based on the technology.

By 1957, IBM had moved away from the vacuum tubes, introducing a machine that includes a record 2,000 transistors. Today, the transistor lives on. But it has gotten much smaller — you know, Moore's Law and all that. The sad part is that we miss the vacuum tube — almost as much as we miss the punch card. Above: J.H. Felker, left, gives instructions to the Tradic computer by means of a plug-in unit while J.R. Harris, right, places numbers into the machine by flipping simple switches. The new computer was developed under the direction of Mr. Felker. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis 1950s: Sci-Fi Cinema (Entertainment) Shortly after the Atomic Age dawned, we entered a golden era of sci-fi cinema. From magnificent movies like Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still to plenty of less stellar fare, Hollywood turned our fears of radiation and scientific overreach into films that ranged from mind-expanding to total cheese. Robots, mutants, Martians and other space aliens became firmly implanted in our collective consciousness, where they remain to this day.

Also in the '50s: Rock 'n' roll became the music of youth, with stars like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry assuming the mantle from swinging crooners like Frank Sinatra. Technology helped fuel the transition, with the solid-body electric guitar — in the form of Fender's Telecaster and Stratocaster models and Gibson's Les Paul — becoming a staple of the six-string arsenal. Top image: Forbidden Planet. Secondary image: Wikimedia . 1957: Spy Satellites (War) When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, back in 1957, they kick-started a space race with the U.S. and caught the American government by complete surprise. The Cold War had begun in earnest and the fact that the Soviets now possessed the capability to take a look at the U.S. from space was distressing enough, but not the main reason for concern. What really got the Americans worrying was the prospect that the Soviets might use their newfound technological advantage to launch nuclear weapons. The fateful beep from the Soviet spacecraft was heard down on Earth and drove home the notion that the U.S.

needed to do something to make sure it could enter the race as a credible player and never suffer the embarrassment of a Sputnik-like shock again. Within a few months the government had responded with an entirely new new DOD agency. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (it later added Defense to its name to become Darpa) was tasked with meeting the U.S. military’s need for innovative science, research and development. One of Darpa’s first objectives was to play catch-up with the Soviet technological surprise and it did so by creating the Corona program, a figurative eye in the sky. Corona was jointly funded by Darpa and the CIA, and from it came the first photo-reconnaissance satellites. These spying spaceships circled the globe and took snaps of what was going on in the USSR and the People's Republic of China – they allowed America to keep tabs on what was afoot behind the iron and bamboo curtains of communism. The Corona satellite officially became the first successful U.S. spy satellite when it returned photo negatives to Earth in August 1960. Service continued with launches through 1972.

Darpa was so skilled at space-age one-upmanship that NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office were created from early Darpa initiatives. NASA assumed responsibility for carrying the space-race torch as Darpa branched out to include any manner of technological advancement in the defense realm. There’s now an estimated 13,000 satellites in orbit – but how many of them are spy satellites, we can’t say. Photo: Cliffords Photography /Flickr 1959: The Hockey Mask (Sports) On the evening of Nov. 1, 1959, early in the first period of a National Hockey League game against the New York Rangers, goaltender Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens was hit in the face by a puck. Like every other goalie of his age, Plante didn't wear a protective mask. He dropped to the ice in a pool of blood. Again. Back in the day, head shots were a routine occurrence. Goalies were expected to leave the ice, get their stitches and come back a few minutes later.

Granted, it was a time before banana-blade curves and space-age materials turned hockey pucks into unpredictable 100-mile-per-hour bullets – but these were still hockey pucks, six-ounce pieces of frozen rubber that could and did put a hurting on exposed flesh. By his own estimation, the 30-year-old Plante had already received 200 stitches in the course of his career. His nose had been broken four times. Twice he'd suffered a broken cheekbone, and once a broken jaw. He'd had enough. After Madison Square Garden doctor Kazuo Yanagisawa – who could "stitch a wound, smoke a cigar, and play gin rummy all at the same time," recalled reporters of the time – repaired the latest injury, Plante returned to the ice wearing a fiberglass mask. Plante had designed the mask himself, using it in practice but never in a game. His coach forbade it; conventional wisdom held that a mask would cause a goalie to lose sight of the puck. Even Plante's teammates laughed at him. But on this night, Plante insisted. He refused to come back unless allowed to wear the mask.

Plante prevailed in that contest of wills, beat the Rangers 3-1, and wore the mask for the rest of his Hall of Fame career . Other goalies soon followed his example. Within a few years, masks were customary. Plante's simple model gave way to the fabulously painted creations of the 1970s , followed by the cage-helmet hybrids of the 1980s and finally today's masks, designed to absorb impacts that could easily be lethal. Great athletes are often said to change the face of their game. For Jacques Plante, that description is literally true. Jacques Plante's goalie mask on display in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Photo: Michael Pick /Flickr. 1959: The Hovercraft (Vehicles) On the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's flight across the English channel, Captain Peter Lamb and inventor Christopher Cockerall took to the seas once again in the world's first fully functional hovercraft. The idea for what we now know as a hovercraft had been around since the 1700s, with prototypes and experiments taking place in the early part of the 20th century.

But it took Cockerall and his team at the National Research Development Corporation nearly a decade to build the first hovercraft, the SR.N1, in the late 1950s. The trip across the channel lasted a little over two hours, and in later iterations, the top speed was increased from 35 to 50 knots thanks to the fitment of a Bristol-Siddeley Viper III jet engine. Photo: The National Archives UK/ Wikipedia 1957: The First Digital Photograph (Photography) In 1957 Walden Kirsch became the first human to have his image digitized by a computer – at just three months old. His father was Russel A. Kirsch, the team leader for the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) and had chosen an image of his son as the first test of his team’s new drum scanner. The SEAC was the first internally programmable computer and had been in operation since 1950. The new scanner could be fed images and then read variations in intensity from the surface of a photograph.

Kirsch’s scanner made a number of historic technologies possible, including CAT scans, satellite imaging and bar codes – not to mention being a precursor to digital photography which is still actively changing humans’ relationship with images. Photo: Wikipedia 1958: Tennis for Two (Entertainment) Brookhaven National Laboratory, a research facility operated by the U.S. government, was home to the cutting edge of 1950s science and technology. The engineers and physicists who worked there would hold annual Visitors Days to show the public its work. William Higinbotham, the lab’s director of instrumentation, wanted to create a more interactive, entertaining display. So he used an analog computer to draw lines and a bouncing ball on the screen of an oscilloscope, calling the game “Tennis for Two” and allowing the players to use buttons and a knob to control the angle and timing of the ball’s return. Tennis for Two was displayed for a few years at the lab and almost entirely forgotten about until the mid-1980s.

Magnavox had patents for home videogame systems that it was enforcing successfully against companies like Nintendo, which attempted to invalidate the patent in court by arguing that Higinbotham (and by extension the United States government) had actually invented the videogame. Nintendo lost, but it did succeed in popularizing the story of Tennis for Two. Today, it is sometimes erroneously cited as being the first videogame, though it was predated by similar designs . Image: Brookhaven National Labs/ Flickr 1953: DNA (Science) Hiding behind the somewhat innocuous and jargon-dense title "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” is the one of the 20th century’s most groundbreaking discoveries: the DNA double helix. Published on April 25, 1953 in the journal Nature, this incredibly important paper is often ranked as one of the most dramatic events in biology. For decades prior, scientists had argued about the mechanism underlying heredity – how parents pass on traits to their kids. Many biologists had thought that proteins were somehow in charge of this necessary part of evolution.

It was a shock to the community when James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the genetic code and showed that the relatively simple molecule DNA was in charge of inheritance from generation to generation. As detailed in Watson’s book The Double Helix, the two scientists figured out the structure and function of DNA by looking at X-ray crystallographic results from other researchers. The results were not obvious; Crick later admitted that he had been on a small dose of LSD when he and Watson envisioned the double helix that controlled all life on Earth. The duo won the Nobel Prize in medicine a decade later for their discovery along with Maurice Wilkins. Unfortunately, rampant sexism in the scientific community denied that honor to Rosalind Franklin, a biologist who supplied Watson and Crick with key data for their finding and whose contributions are often overlooked. Cracking the structure of DNA has been monumentally important for all of biology since. Scientists were able to figure out that the molecule is like an organic computer memory bank, storing information through time and translating its instructions into actions to allow evolution to proceed. It has allowed biologists to understand the genetic history of all organisms and researchers to synthesize and control DNA strands.

Much as atomic energy determined the course of the 20th century, the coming decades are very likely to be shaped by mankind’s new genetic powers. James Watson and Francis Crick, crackers of the DNA code. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis. 1960: The Black Box (Gadgets) David Warren, whose father died in a plane crash when he was 8, created the Flight Data Recorder in 1954. But the device, better known as the Black Box, didn't become popular until 1960. Warren, an aeronautical researcher and chemist for the Australian government's Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL), came up with the idea for the Black Box after his participation in a team investigating the cause of a series of fatal plane crashes involving the world's first commercial jetliners in 1953 and 1954. After the investigation, Warren published a report titled "A Device for Assisting Investigation into Aircraft Accidents" that detailed his plans for a steel, fire-proof box that could record both the instrument activity on a plane as well as up to four hours of conversation in the cockpit.

The report and Warren's idea went on ignored by aviation authorities around the world. So, in 1957, Warren built a prototype of the Flight Data Recorder, which was painted red — most Black Boxes are painted red or orange today as well. But while the Black Box is considered a must-have device in today's aircraft, Warren's prototypes — built with the help of his colleagues in the Australian government — were dismissed as unnecessary until 1958, when Warren showed the device to Sir Robert Hardingham, the Secretary of the British Air Registration Board, during a visit to the ARL. Hardingham asked Warren and his team to produce a Flight Data Recorder for British planes and shortly thereafter, Canadian aviation authorities began using the device too. This was the first significant adoption of the Black Box — which at that time failed to take off in Australia and the U.S. A second turning point came in 1960, after an Australian commercial plane crash resulted in an investigatory judge suggesting that all planes be outfitted with Flight Data Recorders. Australia then became the first country to make the Black Box mandatory in its aircraft. Today, the Black Box is nearly as widely used in an aircraft as are wings and propellers.

Warren died in 2010, in Melbourne, and according to a New York Times obituary, he never made a profit from the Black Box. Australian scientist David Warren poses with his flight data recorder. Photo: Australian Department of Defense/AP 1959: Fidel Castro (Security) In 1959, Fidel Castro was swept into power as Cuba's president and dictator, pushing the CIA to plan his assassination and/or his fall from office – plans that obviously never bore fruit. In 1962 Castro was backed by the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis – a three-way standoff between him, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Chief Nikita Khrushchev. After a tense 13 days, the Soviets dismantled their nuclear missile sites in Cuba and the United States agreed never to invade Cuba. In hindsight, some of the methods U.S.

authorities employed in failed bids or proposals to assassinate Fidel Castro verge on the bizarre to humorous and, as the Guardian said, "would put 007 to shame." The plots include an exploding cigar, putting explosives in shells while hoping Castro would discover them scuba diving, a pen-syringe and a underwater diving suit "that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease," according to the Guardian. Castro was succeeded by his brother, Raúl, in 2011. Fidel Castro speaks to supporters at the Batista military base "Columbia," now known as Ciudad Libertad on Jan. 8, 1959, after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country and Fidel Castro and his band of rebels descended from the island's eastern mountains. Photo: AP. 1951: Catalyzed Plastics (Design) In 1951, Phillips Petroleum researchers Paul Hogan and Robert Banks began exploring the idea of using natural gas byproducts to create components from gasoline. They quickly found unexpected success, but not in the form of a fuel.

Combining both ethylene and propylene with a chromium oxide catalyst, the scientists discovered a resulting white, hard plastic — polypropylene and high density polyethylene (HDPE). The materials were a major breakthrough, requiring only a couple hundred PSI to create a product much harder than other synthetics of the time. Phillips quickly developed a new branch of business focusing on plastics, but the market wasn't quite ready for the new material. In fact, its future was uncertain until a surprising product came to the rescue: the hula hoop. The fitness craze started by the device in 1958 had such a massive impact on production that the hoops took over the entire output of HDPE for six months. Meanwhile, unaware of their work, German researcher Karl Ziegler at the Max Planck Institute had found a more expensive but less demanding way to create the same materials using a titanium-based catalyst. For his work, Ziegler was awarded the Nobel Prize and was long considered the plastics' inventor, along with Italian scientist Giulio Natta.

However, in 1982, over thirty years after Hogan and Banks initial filed their patent, the courts finally settled on a decision, crediting the American duo as the first to create the substances that are now formed into everything from furniture to food containers to recreational apparel – combined output of the materials in 2008 was over 75.1 million tons and growing. Two models gracefully swing their new Hula-Hoops as they display the latest bodice creations in lingerie at a fashion show in Frankfurt, West Germany, Oct. 21, 1958. Photo: Riethausen/AP. 1958: The ICEE Machine (Business) The post-war United States was all about the positive. Jobs were plentiful, and money was flowing. The first planned community in Levittown, New York was completed in 1951, and the suburban trend it started caught on. With their new General Motors cars gassed and ready to go (GM was the largest company on the planet at the time), and new highways spidering out across the country, people began the move out of cities and into shiny new communities. And they were hot, and they were thirsty when they got there.

Which was something of a problem for Omar Knedlik, a Dairy Queen owner in Coffeyville, Kansas, who didn’t have a soda fountain to serve the parched horde. What he did instead was put bottles of soda in a freezer, and sell the partially frozen drinks. The slushy, carbonated drinks were a hit, but a pain to create over and over. So in 1958, with the help of a Dallas engineering firm, the ICEE machine and company were born, devoted to the manufacture of automated, frozen, carbonated goodness. You may know your favorite frosty treat as an ICEE, a Slurpee, or a Slush Puppy, perhaps as the ThirstFreezer – they all come from the machine Knedlik invented. Did the automobile open up the suburban lifestyle? Sure, but the ICEE made it cool.

Question: In which decade was the hovercraft invented?
Answer: 1950s