Propeller (other)

A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working fluid such as water or air. Propellers are used to pump fluid through a pipe or duct, or to create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. The blades are shaped so that their rotational motion through the fluid causes a pressure difference between the two surfaces of the blade by Bernoulli's principle which exerts force on the fluid. Most marine propellers are screw propellers with helical blades rotating on a propeller shaft with an approximately horizontal axis.

History

Early developments

The principle employed in using a screw propeller is derived from stern sculling. In sculling, a single blade is moved through an arc, from side to side taking care to keep presenting the blade to the water at the effective angle. The innovation introduced with the screw propeller was the extension of that arc through more than 360° by attaching the blade to a rotating shaft. Propellers can have a single blade, but in practice there is nearly always more than one so as to balance the forces involved.

The origin of the screw propeller starts at least as early as Archimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC), who used a screw to lift water for irrigation and bailing boats, so famously that it became known as Archimedes' screw. It was probably an application of spiral movement in space (spirals were a special study of Archimedes) to a hollow segmented water-wheel used for irrigation by Egyptians for centuries. A flying toy, the bamboo-copter, was enjoyed in China beginning around 320 AD. Later, Leonardo da Vinci adopted the screw principle to drive his theoretical helicopter, sketches of which involved a large canvas screw overhead.

In 1661, Toogood and Hays proposed using screws for waterjet propulsion, though not as a propeller. Robert Hooke in 1681 designed a horizontal watermill which was remarkably similar to the Kirsten-Boeing vertical axis propeller designed almost two and a half centuries later in 1928; two years later Hooke modified the design to provide motive power for ships through water. In 1693 a Frenchman by the name of Du Quet invented a screw propeller which was tried in 1693 but later abandoned. In 1752, the ''Academie des Sciences'' in Paris granted Burnelli a prize for a design of a propeller-wheel. At about the same time, the French mathematician Alexis-Jean-Pierre Paucton suggested a water propulsion system based on the Archimedean screw. In 1771, steam-engine inventor James Watt in a private letter suggested using "spiral oars" to propel boats, although he did not use them with his steam engines, or ever implement the idea.

One of the first practical and applied uses of a propeller was on a submarine dubbed which was designed in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1775 by Yale student and inventor David Bushnell, with the help of clock maker, engraver, and brass foundryman Isaac Doolittle. Bushnell's brother Ezra Bushnell and ship's carpenter and clock maker Phineas Pratt constructed the hull in Saybrook, Connecticut. On the night of September 6, 1776, Sergeant Ezra Lee piloted ''Turtle'' in an attack on in New York Harbor. ''Turtle'' also has the distinction of being the first submarine used in battle. Bushnell later described the propeller in an October 1787 letter to Thomas Jefferson: "An oar formed upon the principle of the screw was fixed in the forepart of the vessel its axis entered the vessel and being turned one way rowed the vessel forward but being turned the other way rowed it backward. It was made to be turned by the hand or foot." The brass propeller, like all the brass and moving parts on ''Turtle'', was crafted by Issac Doolittle of New Haven.

In 1785, Joseph Bramah of England proposed a propeller solution of a rod going through the underwater aft of a boat attached to a bladed propeller, though he never built it.

In February 1800, Edward Shorter of London proposed using a similar propeller attached to a rod angled down temporarily deployed from the deck above the waterline and thus requiring no water seal, and intended only to assist becalmed sailing vessels. He tested it on the transport ship at Gibraltar and Malta, achieving a speed of .Carlton, p. 2

In 1802, American lawyer and inventor John Stevens built a boat with a rotary steam engine coupled to a four-bladed propeller. The craft achieved a speed of , but Stevens abandoned propellers due to the inherent danger in using the high-pressure steam engines. His subsequent vessels were paddle-wheeled boats.

By 1827, Czech inventor Josef Ressel had invented a screw propeller with multiple blades on a conical base. He tested it in February 1826 on a manually-driven ship and successfully used it on a steamboat in 1829. His 48-ton ship ''Civetta'' reached 6 knots. This was the first successful Archimedes screw-propelled ship. His experiments were banned by police after a steam engine accident. Ressel, a forestry inspector, held an Austro-Hungarian patent for his propeller. The screw propeller was an improvement over paddlewheels as it wasn't affected by ship motions or draft changes.

John Patch, a mariner in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia developed a two-bladed, fan-shaped propeller in 1832 and publicly demonstrated it in 1833, propelling a row boat across Yarmouth Harbour and a small coastal schooner at Saint John, New Brunswick, but his patent application in the United States was rejected until 1849 because he was not an American citizen. His efficient design drew praise in American scientific circles but by then he faced multiple competitors.

Screw propellers

Despite experimentation with screw propulsion before the 1830s, few of these inventions were pursued to the testing stage, and those that were proved unsatisfactory for one reason or another.

In 1835, two inventors in Britain, John Ericsson and Francis Pettit Smith, began working separately on the problem. Smith was first to take out a screw propeller patent on 31 May, while Ericsson, a gifted Swedish engineer then working in Britain, filed his patent six weeks later.Bourne, p. 84. Smith quickly built a small model boat to test his invention, which was demonstrated first on a pond at his Hendon farm, and later at the Royal Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London, where it was seen by the Secretary of the Navy, Sir William Barrow. Having secured the patronage of a London banker named Wright, Smith then built a , canal boat of six tons burthen called ''Francis Smith'', which was fitted with his wooden propeller and demonstrated on the Paddington Canal from November 1836 to September 1837. By a fortuitous accident, the wooden propeller of two turns was damaged during a voyage in February 1837, and to Smith's surprise the broken propeller, which now consisted of only a single turn, doubled the boat's previous speed, from about four miles an hour to eight. Smith would subsequently file a revised patent in keeping with this accidental discovery.

In the meantime, Ericsson built a screw-propelled steamboat, ''Francis B. Ogden'' in 1837, and demonstrated his boat on the River Thames to senior members of the British Admiralty, including Surveyor of the Navy Sir William Symondss, Symonds and his entourage were unimpressed. The Admiralty maintained the view that screw propulsion would be ineffective in ocean-going service, while Symonds himself believed that screw propelled ships could not be steered efficiently. Following this rejection, Ericsson built a second, larger screw-propelled boat, ''Robert F. Stockton'', and had her sailed in 1839 to the United States, where he was soon to gain fame as the designer of the U.S. Navy's first screw-propelled warship, .Bourne, pp. 87–89.

Apparently aware of the Royal Navy's view that screw propellers would prove unsuitable for seagoing service, Smith determined to prove this assumption wrong. In September 1837, he took his small vessel (now fitted with an iron propeller of a single turn) to sea, steaming from Blackwall, London to Hythe, Kent, with stops at Ramsgate, Dover and Folkestone. On the way back to London on the 25th, Smith's craft was observed making headway in stormy seas by officers of the Royal Navy. This revived Admiralty's interest and Smith was encouraged to build a full size ship to more conclusively demonstrate the technology.Bourne, p. 85.

was built in 1838 by Henry Wimshurst

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