Jet Boats
In the 1950s Hamilton set out to try to build a boat that could navigate the shallow fast flowing rivers where he lived. The rivers were too shallow for propeller driven boats to navigate as the propeller would hit the river bottom.
He investigated the American Hanley Hydro-Jet, a model which drew in water and fired it out through a steerable nozzle underneath the boat. Even when further adapted it did not work well. An employee suggested to have the nozzle just above the waterline.
When he took one of his early demonstration jet boats to the US, the media scoffed when he said he planned to take it up the Colorado River (U.S.), but in 1960 a Hamilton jet became the first boat to travel up through the Grand Canyon. The critics were silenced further when the boat also went down river through the canyon.
Read more about this topic: Bill Hamilton (engineer)
Famous quotes containing the words jet and/or boats:
“Gimme the Plaza, the jet and $150 million, too.”
—Headline, New York Post (Feb. 13, 1990)
“Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)