Both Germany and Britain can proudly claim parenthood of the greatest advance in aviation since 1903 when the Wright brothers flew from a sand dune at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina â the jet engine. But the jet had no sooner reached adolescence when it was adopted by America, where it was soon to be joined by the two men who had invented it. This week, America belatedly gives thanks to the jetâs pioneering fathers and for its own lucky inheritance.
Hans von Ohain and Sir Frank Whittle have won the Charles Stark Draper Prize, American engineeringâs highest accolade. It was von Ohainâs engine that propelled the first jet aeroplane, the Heinkel 178, into the air in August 1939, near Rostok, Germany. Whittleâs, the Gloster E28/39, followed 20 months later at an airfield at Cranwell, Lincolnshire. Neither knew that the other had done away with the propeller and reciprocating engine. Nor did either anticipate that their inventions would mature not in their homelands, but in the US.
The Draper Prize and its $375 000, the worldâs richest for engineering, is an unashamed exercise in public relations. Awarded biennially under the auspices of the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, it was created in 1988 by engineers who wanted the public to appreciate what they do. The first award, made the following year, went to the inventors and developers of the integrated circuit, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. Sheila Widnall, professor of engineering at MIT and a member of the 1991 awardâs selection committee, explains: âWhen people ask, âWhat is engineering?â the common answer I hear is: âDamned if I knowâ.â The Draper Prize, she says, âis a link in a long chainâ that, by its visibility, will answer that question.
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The 1991 award could hardly go to two people who better fit the ethos of engineeringâs equivalent of the Nobel prize. Once a short list was in their hands, the selection committee voted unanimously for von Ohain and Whittle. âIt was very clear,â says Solomon Buchsbaum, senior vice president of AT&T Bell Laboratories and chairman of the committee.
Draperâs keepers are quick to point out the important difference between their prize and the Nobel, however. The touchstone of engineering, observes Robert White, president of the National Academy of Engineering, is âthe reduction to practiceâ of a new idea. Charles Draper, inventor of inertial guidance systems that guide planes and missiles, was the quintessence of someone who could reduce complicated concepts into practical devices, White says. To inspire the judges, adds Widnall, it also doesnât hurt if the process of doing so was fraught with difficulty.
The birth of jet aircraft fills that prescription. Conventional propulsion was nearing its speed limit in the 1930s. Air friction kept most piston-driven propeller aeroplanes below 300 kilometres per hour. To fly faster one had to fly higher, in thinner air. But the lack of oxygen meant that the piston engine could not burn fuel efficiently at higher altitudes, nor could propellers operate properly as they turned at speeds approaching that of sound, generating sonic booms at their tips and sending shock waves down their shafts. Besides, the reciprocating engine was becoming unmanageably complex.
Whittle and von Ohain were two among several engineers in the 1920s who believed that engines driven by gas turbines were the answer. âThe tree of knowledge tends to produce its different fruits pretty much at once,â Whittle explains. He gets credit for first putting down on paper the idea that gas turbines could power an aircraft (albeit a propeller craft at first) in 1928 when he was a 22-year-old cadet at Cranwell RAF college.
In retrospect, conception was the easiest part of the process. In both Germany and Britain, the path to a successful proof of principle was tortuous, as might be expected with a revolutionary new technology. But developing it into a production model during the Second World War was as much a battle as the dogfights in the skies above Europe. It took a heavy toll on Whittle, whose mental health suffered during his work on the jet, and who lost control of his creation to more powerful institutions in a time of national emergency (âJubilee for the jet engineâ, żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ”, 11 May).
In Germany, von Ohain and his backer and mentor, the visionary if temperamental Ernst Heinkel, suffered a similar fate as they watched a more astute Willy Messerschmitt make off with their prize.
Whittleâs small company, Power Jets, had begun to lose its grip on the jet engine even before its maiden flight in 1941. (A flight, Whittle points out, that he did not make, as some have written. âThe first experimental plane and its designer? They couldnât risk that,â he says. âI did taxi it at another field, though.â) Whittle had hoped to build a prototype and eventually turn Power Jets from a research outfit into a manufacturer of jet engines. Money was tight from the outset, however; financial backers thought the project too risky and, because the research was secret, believed the government should pay for it. The government told Whittle that the idea couldnât be that good if he couldnât win the confidence of private backers.
In 1940, Power Jets had been forced into a rancorous relationship with the British aircraft industry in the form of Rover, Vauxhall, de Havilland and British Thomson-Houston. Rolls-Royce took over development in 1943 and Power Jets was nationalised the following year. Renamed Power Jets R&D, the companyâs activities were confined to research. In 1946, it became the National Gas Turbine Establishment, at which point Whittle resigned along with many of his original engineering team. He had already relinquished his patents and plans for the engine to the government and several larger companies. âThere was a war on and I was an officer,â he recalls without apparent bitterness. âI couldnât possibly in decency have made a profit out of my duties.â
With quite apparent bitterness, however, he recalls the way he was squeezed out of development of the jet aircraft. âOne damned civil servant came right out and said to me, âYouâve got nothing to sellâ, meaning they had rights to everything.â Arthur Tedder, then the RAFâs director of research and development and a supporter of Whittle, conceded that the government held all the cards. âThen he pointed to me,â Sir Frank recalls with a chuckle, âand added, âincluding the jokerâ.â
Whittle says Britainâs postwar effort to commercialise the jet aircraft âjust fizzled outâ. Though the British fighter, the Meteor, saw little action during the Second World War, the jet aircraft was seen primarily as a weapon. Britainâs attempt at a commercial passenger jet, the Comet, went down in flames â literally in several cases â because the fuselage suffered disastrous metal fatigue.
In 1941, the British government had shared Whittleâs research with the Americans as part of the joint war effort. âThey got it all on a plate,â says Whittle, and they quickly put it into practice. âGeneral Electric and Pratt & Whitney (in the US) had much more drive than outfits ruled by the ministry. There was too much of a heavy hand of government control (in Britain) and too much dependency on government contracts.â Although the US was originally barred from using Whittleâs research for commercial purposes, it soon overcame the problem â it paid $800 000 to the British government after the war to have the ban lifted.
Von Ohain faced his own set of obstacles in Germany as he simultaneously set out upon a path parallel to Whittleâs. The German effort to replace propellers with jet turbines was repeatedly derailed by macabre events and internecine squabbles. One of its only backers in the German air ministry, Ernst Udet, committed suicide in 1941. Hitler himself thought the idea interesting but when the war started Germany focused on improving the piston engines that drove the Luftwaffe. The first jet fighter, the Messerschmitt 262, was not introduced until 1944 and was more an act of desperation for which neither the planes nor the fliers were prepared.
Unlike Whittle, von Ohain did not divide his time between developing a business, serving in the military and improving on his initial design. âI didnât pay too much attention to politics,â he recalls, leaving that job to Heinkel. The imaginative but irascible Heinkel financed von Ohainâs work from the fortune he acquired making conventional aircraft.
Heinkel had the money to turn the Heinkel 178 into a production engine, and he had von Ohain. But Germany lacked materials and engineers were scarce. Heinkelâs efforts to double the thrust of his experimental engine stumbled, while Messerschmitt curried political favour in the air ministry and won the right to design and build the first jet fighters.
Both von Ohain and Whittle ended up in the US, though for different reasons. For von Ohain, the trip began in his childhood imagination. âThere used to be these books about German boys who would stowaway in ships to America, make their fortunes and come back throwing dollars everywhere,â he remembers. Itâs a notion that, after 44 years in America, he finds amusing. âAnyway, I always thought of America as the land of opportunity,â he adds.
During the postwar occupation of Germany von Ohain worked for the US Navy. âMy American boss said the air force had wanted me to work in the US at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,â von Ohain recalls. âI protected you,â he told me. He thought I would thank him. But I said I actually would like to go. He said: âYou wouldnât like it there. You are too kind. You have to be tough to work there.â I went anyway.â
Seeing an idea through
Von Ohain shed Europe quickly. In 1947 he was working for the very air force that helped defeat the Luftwaffe, and continued his research on jets at Wright-Patterson for decades. He became chief scientist of the Aero Propulsion Laboratory in 1975, then retired four years later to become professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Whittle resigned from Power Jets in 1946 but continued to advise the air ministry after the war until he retired from the RAF for health reasons in 1948. âI was a very tired man at the time,â he says. âI had been in and out of the hospital. But I thought the jet had a tremendous future.â In 1948, the government finally recognised his achievement by giving him ÂŁ100 000 and a knighthood. It was oil drilling technology that drew him back into engineering research, however, not jets, although he advised BOAC and Rolls-Royce on aircraft engines for several years.
A frequent visitor to the US, Whittle decided to make it his home after taking a professorship in 1976 at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He married an American whom he had first met 29 years before in the US and settled in Maryland. His ties to Britain remain strong, however; a photograph of the queen occupies a prominent spot at his home near Washington DC, and he proudly wears the crest of the RAF on his blue blazer. Among his most prized possessions is the Order of Merit.
Engineers say with some pride that while scientists have only to discover a piece or two of a grand puzzle to win acclaim, engineers must see the idea through to its finish. Candidates for the Draper, explains Widnall, are âindividuals or small groups who come up with an idea and push it through to practice, overcoming bureaucracies and inertia and getting funds for ideas to demonstration of a working deviceâ. Ironically, adds Buchsbaum, Alfred Nobel was just such a man, an inventor more than a scientist.
Whittle and von Ohain, who met after the war and have become friends in the US, agree that conception is relatively easy. âQuite a lot of people have written to me and said they invented the jet engine,â says Whittle. âIâm sure some were right.â Smiling, he adds: âThey just didnât do anything about it.â Von Ohain remembers that theoreticians in the 1920s knew that the gas turbine was the logical way to overcome the piston engineâs limitations. âBut they were too early,â he says. âThey simply did not have the proper lightweight materials that could sustain the stress.â Both agree that Americaâs postwar wealth and its vast resources of materials and engineers almost ensured that commercial jet aircraft would prosper there. âThey donât solve their problems,â Whittle says of American engineering, âthey trample them to death.â Currently, 80 per cent of the worldâs airline service is provided by American-built turbojet aircraft.
The claim to innovation still belongs to the inventors, however. They both have ready and similar answers when asked what the secret of innovation is. âPerseverance,â says Whittle, quoting his school motto, âas well as a bit of luckâ. âWork, sweat and ingenuity,â says von Ohain, paraphrasing a saying of Thomas Edison.
In aviationâs near future, Whittle sees commercial jets flying at three times the speed of sound and at an altitude of 20 kilometres. âThe big jumps are going to be through materials, such as ceramics and turbine blade cooling techniques, because higher turbine inlet temperatures mean greater performance. These will make a tremendous difference in the efficiency of engines,â which could rise to 65 per cent, compared with the 41 per cent of Concordeâs engines.
For his part, von Ohain stresses the need to integrate engines more elegantly with airframes to improve the lift to drag ratio of a supersonic transport from Concordeâs five to one to as much as ten to one.
The question is, will the public want such a plane even if it could be built? As von Ohain pertinently points out: âThe great inventions of the world are seldom made because there is a ready need for them.â
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Go West, young engineer, go West
In the family of nations, none has profited as much through inheritance as the US. Among its most prized possessions are its engineers, moneyspinners in a world economy fuelled by technology. Whittle and von Ohain followed a long tradition that shows no sign of abating
In 1982, according to a survey by Peter Cannon at Rockwell International, close to one in five engineers in the US was of foreign nationality, either on a temporary visa or a naturalised citizen. Eighty per cent of these foreign engineers worked in the industry. At universities, engineering remains the most popular choice of study for foreign students. Recent surveys show these trends are accelerating.
Considerable ado has ensued. Those who make policy in Washington, mindful of the spasms of xenophobia shown by some in Congress and the White House, have endeavoured to find out whether the national engineering enterprise is somehow threatened. Cannon, for one, found industry to be unruffled. The issue, said the senior engineers and researchers he queried, was irrelevant. The only problem they could imagine would be a decision by more foreign engineers to pack up and go home. As it happens, more and more are deciding to stay.
That is fortunate for the US, because not only is the pool of young Americans of university age shrinking, but fewer of them are choosing science and engineering. Cannonâs industrialists suggested that if wise men and women felt the need to do something, they should find out how to motivate more American children to get interested in science and engineering. Cannon and his colleagues in business conclude that the best thinks the US can do now is make it easier for foreign engineering students to adopt America.