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[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
During the early 1930s, while T Townsend Brown continued tinkering with larger and larger capacitors, Hungarian aviation engineer Henry Coanda made an interesting discovery: drawing the air up around a disc caused it to rise vertically upwards. By exploiting the resultant discrepancy in air pressure immediately above and below a saucer-shaped craft, known today as the 'Coanda effect', he argued that a novel means of propulsion might be possible.
Although eyewitness accounts assert that Nazi scientists were developing a flying disc that utilized the Coanda effect at a factory somewhere near Prague during the closing months of the Second World War, little corroborating evidence has survived. The fleeing Nazis are reported to have thoughtfully tidied up after themselves, blowing up their flying saucers on the runway before the Allies could get their hands on them.
It would not be long, however, before the Coanda effect emerged again in the disc-shaped form of the Avro-Car, a US Air Force project developed in Canada during the 1950s. Designed by British engineer John Frost, the Avro-Car was powered by three gas turbine engines driving a 1.5-metre central fan used for vertical take-off. Once in the air, the turbojet exhaust would be shifted to the rear, giving the vehicle forward thrust to generate lift.
However, when the Avro-Car proved highly unstable even at very low altitudes, work was discontinued and the prototype quietly shipped off to the military museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia.
In fact, the only flying disc ever to be truly successful was devised in the 1950s by an inventor named Fred Morrison. Known originally as Morrison's Flyin' Saucer, his design was picked up by the Wham-O toy company who started marketing copies at 59 cents each, calling them Pluto Platters before changing the name again to Frisbee in 1958. There are now in excess of 100 million Frisbees spinning their way through the world today.
The Coming of the Saucers | Flying Flapjacks | Getting Saucers to Fly | Avro-Cars and Pluto Platters | Backyard Saucers | Secret Skies | Soaring into the Future | Find out more
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