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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0239.PDF
FLIGHT, 2 March 1956 ENTERPRISE IN AIRSCREWS First Details of a Mighty New de Havilland Airscrew and the Story of 21 Years of Achievement IN Flight for March 12th, 1910, we published a letter froma youthful and promising aeronaut named Geoffreyde Havilland. In it he discussed his design for a variable- pitch propeller: "There can be no doubt," he wrote, "that a propeller with an adjustable pitch must be a very great advantage ..." We recall how, at that time, the young de Havilland was experimenting with his first flying machine, which he suc- cessfully flew in the summer of 1910. The only pan of it that survives is its propeller, a 5ft affair beautifully worked from solid spruce, which today presides in the de Havilland museum at Hatfield. It was in fact of fixed pitch—although the very first de Havilland aeroplane (which failed on its first attempted flight in December 1908) had two propellers which, as described by "D.H." in his letter, "were adjustable as to pitch and twist." We asked Sir Geoffrey de Havilland to add a 1956 post- script to his letter of 1910. He says: "We knew so little in those days about optimum blade-angles, engine speed and so forth that I devised this propeller to enable me to select the best angle by trial and error. We just ran up the engine on the ground with different blade angle settings to see which gave the best results on a spring balance! It sounds comical now, but we were very proud of it then. We designed the propeller of the second aeroplane with fixed pitch, as we knew more of the game then." [Continued overleaf X Advance of the airscrew: the first published impression of the newde Havilland airscrew, now being designed for the 500 m.p.h. air- liners of the 1960s. It represents an advance in the art of the' airscrew as significant as was the introduction of variable pitch a quarter-century ogo. CORRESPONDENCE.. The de Havilland propeller of 1910. This picture, which we believe has neverbeen previously published, shows it installed on the first de Havilland aeroplane ever to fly. Note the engine: with four cylinders, horizontallyopposed, it developed 45 h.p., and—like aircraft and propeller—was of entirely de Havilland design. Flashback to the correspondence page of our issue tor March 12th, 1910—theyouthful Geoffrey de Havilland describes his design for a propeller with adjustable pitch.
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