early 20th century

Otherwise known as Distance Plunging. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240720-the-extinct-olympic-sport-that-was-the-dullest-of-all-time

Hello all, I was doing some reach on the Russian cruiser Novik laid down in 1900 and I found some interesting information regarding some alternate proposals. Apparently the German shipbuilder Howaldtswerke AG proposed a 30 knot capable cruiser design in 1898! As far as I am aware, Novik was a...

Introduction: John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, Commander, Captain, Admiral, Second then First Sea Lord, one if not the most influential and prominent naval commander of the Royal Navy. His ideas, views and dedicated work allowed the modernization of the Royal Navy to remain in first...

Trying to research a design listed in Avalanche Press’ Great War at Sea: Plan Red game module for a US fast armored cruiser with 8-10” guns. I looked through Norman Friedman’s book on US Cruiser Design History and see some collateral mention of design studies in 1906 with no real specifics. I...

An article on the RINA website regarding an recent addition to the fleet of the present day Guardia di Finanza, got me to wondering, just what designs had been proposed over the years for the naval element of its previous incarnation as the Regia Guardia di Finanza (1881-1946)?

At the beginning of aviation at a time when the propeller was evolving slowly, some visionaries submitted Precaucous ideas to existing technology, such as Henri Coanda or the Italian Cosimo Canovetti, trained as a civil urban planning engineer, he collaborated with Baron Haussmann , developer...

KONSTANTIN UDALOV: "IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF V. B. SHAVROV". Vol. 1 Moscow 2022, 228 pages, ISBN: 978-5-4465-3169-1 Hi everyone! This is Konstantin Udalovs latest publication. The book "In the Footsteps of V.B. Shavrov" is an attempt to provide extended information on aeronautics and aviation in...

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/b9pyft/1908_alexander_graham_bell_and_crew_flying_a/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alexander-graham-bell-goes-and-flies-a-kite-for-science/

The Victorians developed effective turbines for turning water and steam power into work, and also turbopumps for doing the opposite. During the early part of the 20th century, research was carried out into various arrangements for turbo-compression, combustion and turbine work extraction in the...

This is not an unbuilt project, but it is an enigmatic mystery that perhaps members here might be able to add more to. The Volta was a 19-ton electric-powered submarine armed with two 12in torpedo tubes, built by Rennie Forrestt Shipbuilding, Engineering & Drydock Co. Ltd at Wivenhoe, Essex...

These projects date back to the beginning of the 20th century when many warship experiences and design concepts were developed. Neither proved to be viable. There is little information about these projects and in one case it is only possible to speculate on certain specifications. The first...

From Vintage magazine, here is an old mystery airplane to ID ?,the picture number "1" is the cover of the magazine.

I stumbled across this interesting blog by an Australian academic Dr Brett Holman who has researched the cultural impacts of the fear of bombing on British society during the early 20th century. There are a lot of other interesting British and Australian related aviation entries too...

Hello folks, Hope this is not old news or wrongly placed – if so, many apologies: for all that the illustration below is an artist's impression, I decided to try this in 'Early Aircraft' (as opposed to ‘Theoretical and Speculative’) because there were at least scale-model versions of this idea...

Around the previous turn of the century, there was an Engineering School based in the Crystal Palace, Paxton's famous glass exhibition building which had by then been re-erected at Sydenham in London. Several pioneer aviators passed through the area at one time or another, but I know of no...

Ever since 1911, Glenn H. Curtiss constantly dreamed of an airplane which would become a "family car of the air". His last efforts in this direction was a "flying wing" biplane with a pusher propeller, the configuration of which was very much like that of the Dunne D.8 of 1911. The similarity...

Pierre Levasseur was a French aircraft designer born in 1871. His company was called Sociéte Pierre Levasseur Aéronautique and thay produced aircraft mainly for the French Navy in the inter-war period. As a subsidiary, Levasseur also ran a successful flying school. The chief pilot of his...

This sounds like a fascinating series of competitions (with more than fifty registrants and twenty flying prototypes in some years). I'm quite curious to no more about it. I've found references (and photos) of a few individual contenders - but trying to figure out what the designers were...

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply...