Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI FRS was an English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft.
Cockerell was born in Cambridge, where his father, Sir Sydney Cockerell, was curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Christopher attended the preparatory school of St Faith’s. Christopher was educated at Gresham’s School, Holt, Norfolk. He matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge to read mechanical engineering and was tutored by William Dobson Womersley. He was later to return to Cambridge to study radio and electronics.
He began his career working for W. H. Allen & Sons of Bedford. After returning to the University of Cambridge in 1934 to study radio and electronics, he went to work at the Radio Research Company. In 1935 he went to work at the Marconi Company, During his time in Chelmsford, he led a research team in the famous Marconi hut at Writtle and worked on many systems, including radar. After the war he contributed to the development of several very sophisticated pieces of equipment, including radio location technology, and the first equipment used by the BBC in Alexandra Palace.
After he left the Marconi Company, 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 small 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. Cockerell demonstrated the principle with a now famous experiment involving two empty coffee tins and the fan from a vacuum cleaner. He used these to show that by blowing air into the gap between two cans, one inside the other, a vessel could be lifted on an air cushion. No one in government or private industry was interested in the notion, until a boatbuilder friend made a proper model that Cockerell could use to demonstrate the idea.The first commercial hovercraft, SR.N1, was built by Saunders Roe, then owned by Westland, the military and civilian helicopter makers. It successfully crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover on July 25, 1959, with Cockerell on board as ballast, and was the forerunner of the bigger passenger hovercrafts that were to later cross the Channel daily.
The SR.N1 was capable of 30mph, at a height of 15 inches
Cockerell was knighted for his achievement in 1969.