Sir Christopher Cockerell watches the Pricess Margaret roar up the Thames. Photo archived with acknowledgement and thanks from the Evening Standard.
Christopher Cockerell, Born 1910
Inventor of the Hovercraft
Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI FRS was an English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft. He was born in Cambridge, where his father, Sir Sydney Cockerell, was curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, having previously been the secretary of William Morris. His mother was the illustrator and designer Florence Kingsford Cockerell. Christopher Cockerell was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk and at Cambridge University where he read mechanical engineering. After a career in electrical engineering, he bought Ripplecraft Ltd., a small Norfolk boat and caravan hire company, with a legacy left by his father-in-law. The firm made little money, and Cockerell began to think how the craft could be made to go faster. He was led to earlier work by the Thornycroft company, in which a vessel had been partially raised out of the water by a small engine. Cockerell's greatest invention, the hovercraft, grew out of this work. It occurred to him that if the entire craft were lifted from the water, the craft would effectively have no drag. This, he conjectured, would give the craft the ability to attain a much higher maximum speed than could be achieved by the boats of the time.